Re: [gentoo-user] How to get plain ascii from "man"?

[Walter Dnes]

On Wed, Mar 25, 2009 at 10:12:20PM +0000, Grant Edwards wrote
> How do you get a plain ascii file (no backspacing, no escape
> sequences) out of "man"?  Running it through col or colcrt
> doesn't work anymore, because the default output contains ANSI
> color escape sequences.

  I done it!  And no, the following "man2text" script is not brought to
you via an uncorrected dialup modem<g>.

#!/bin/bash
sed "s/^[\[[^m]\+m//g"

  *IMPORTANT* the 8th and 9th columns of the second line are *NOT* "^[".
That's actually the <escape> character as displayed in vim.  In vim in
entry mode, you can insert control character by prefixing them with
CTRL-V.  To enter the <escape> character, press CTRL-V and release, then
press escape.

  Here's the logic
  - You want to get rid of all ANSI terminal sequences
  - all ANSI terminal sequences start with <escape>[, have 1 or more
    mode characters, and finish off with "m"
  - the sed one-liner deletes all such occurences (technically, it
    replaces them with nothing).

-- 
Walter Dnes <waltdnes@××××××××.org>