Date: Mon, 30 Jan 2017 18:00:53 -0700 (MST) From: Warren Block <wblock@wonkity.com> To: David Christensen <dpchrist@holgerdanske.com> Cc: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Subject: man page text output (was Re: FreeBSD 11.0-RELEASE-p7 i386 system drive imaging and migration) Message-ID: <alpine.BSF.2.20.1701301752200.85129@wonkity.com> In-Reply-To: <b545887a-71f1-c218-c572-7e904ca5a485@holgerdanske.com> References: <df0c81d7-fd2b-852f-4007-5fb4b24100e0@holgerdanske.com> <alpine.BSF.2.20.1701290622500.13432@wonkity.com> <516b147d-6faa-b9c0-1d8f-2313a0755211@holgerdanske.com> <alpine.BSF.2.20.1701292206450.71961@wonkity.com> <3f6c8bfb-70a4-74c2-3879-b328ecd3bb38@holgerdanske.com> <alpine.BSF.2.20.1701300816340.85129@wonkity.com> <b545887a-71f1-c218-c572-7e904ca5a485@holgerdanske.com>
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On Mon, 30 Jan 2017, David Christensen wrote: >> >> Sure, there are control characters mixed in with the output. Easier to >> search in the pager, but this will work: >> >> man rc.conf | col -b | grep ifconfig_DEFAULT > > Okay. > > > 'man' is interleaving control characters to underline 'ifconfig_D' when > output is to STDOUT or to $PAGER: Yes. It has been doing that since the days of actual TTYs, since that was how they underlined. > Is there a way (environment variable, alias) to filter 'man' output through > 'col -b' when output is to STDOUT (rather than $PAGER)? Probably, although offhand after a long day, I'm not thinking of a short, clever way. It used to be possible to generate "ascii" outpu with groff. Now we have mandoc, which can surely do it, but I don't see how: mandoc -T ascii rc.conf mandoc: rc.conf: ERROR: No such file or directory It might just be a missing MANPATH setting, I don't know. I'm also not sure whether "ascii" output included the control characters.
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