Command Line – Program to Pass STDIN to STDOUT with Color Codes Stripped

colorsfilterpipe

I have a command that produces output in color, and I would like to pipe it into a file with the color codes stripped out. Is there a command that works like cat except that it strips color codes? I plan to do something like this:

$ command-that-produces-colored-output | stripcolorcodes > outfile

Best Answer

You'd think there'd be a utility for that, but I couldn't find it. However, this Perl one-liner should do the trick:

perl -pe 's/\e\[?.*?[\@-~]//g'

Example:

$ command-that-produces-colored-output | perl -pe 's/\e\[?.*?[\@-~]//g' > outfile

Or, if you want a script you can save as stripcolorcodes:

#! /usr/bin/perl

use strict;
use warnings;

while (<>) {
  s/\e\[?.*?[\@-~]//g; # Strip ANSI escape codes
  print;
}

If you want to strip only color codes, and leave any other ANSI codes (like cursor movement) alone, use

s/\e\[[\d;]*m//g;

instead of the substitution I used above (which removes all ANSI escape codes).

Related Question