Remove ANSI color codes from a text file using bash

Question

I have a bash script that runs and outputs to a text file however the colour codes it uses are also included what i'd like to know is how to remove them from the file, ie

^[[38;1;32mHello^[[39m
^[[38;1;31mUser^[[39m

so I just want to be left with Hello and User

Related answer using python: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/14693701/how-can-i-remove-the-ansi-escape-sequences-from-a-string-in-python — GreyCat, Oct 10 '13 at 17:15
Duplicate: http://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/4527/program-that-passes-stdin-to-stdout-with-color-codes-stripped — GreyCat, Oct 10 '13 at 17:16

score 19 · Answer 1 · edited Jul 01 '15 at 21:21

19

sed -r "s/\x1B\[(([0-9]{1,2})?(;)?([0-9]{1,2})?)?[m,K,H,f,J]//g" file_name

this command removes the special characters and color codes from the file

these are some of ANSI codes: ESC[#;#H or ESC[#;#f moves cursor to line #, column # ESC[2J clear screen and home cursor ESC[K clear to end of line,

note in case of clear code there is neither number nor semicolon ;

agree with below comment: if the numbers are more than 2 digit kindly use this:

sed -r "s/\x1B\[(([0-9]+)(;[0-9]+)*)?[m,K,H,f,J]//g" filename

edited Jul 01 '15 at 21:21

Jasen

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answered Jun 19 '15 at 12:54

sandy_1111

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there is no guarantee on the number of number parts in the code, those for setting colour can have upto 5 numbers without redundancy. the codes for setting other features (eg linux consile bell frequency) can have more than 2 digits in a row. – Jasen Jul 01 '15 at 05:22
agree with you Jasen :-) – sandy_1111 Jul 01 '15 at 11:17
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The commas in `[m,K,H,f,J]` are superfluous, right? – Tuetschek May 02 '18 at 13:22

score 10 · Answer 2 · answered Feb 06 '19 at 06:10

10

My solution:

... | sed $'s/\e\\[[0-9;:]*[a-zA-Z]//g'

The colon is there to support escapes for some old terminal types.

answered Feb 06 '19 at 06:10

Wiimm

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What's the leading "$" for? – fstamour Mar 10 '21 at 13:23
Ah, it's for the '\e' to be interpolated: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/11966312/how-does-the-leading-dollar-sign-affect-single-quotes-in-bash#11966402 – fstamour Mar 10 '21 at 14:47
bash supports c-like escaping with $'...' – Wiimm Dec 02 '22 at 11:00
Tested this successfully with: `echo $'\033'"[38;1;32mHello"$'\033'"[39m"` (from Jasen's comment [here](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/19296667/remove-ansi-color-codes-from-a-text-file-using-bash#comment50315550_19597730) ) – Shadi Jan 25 '23 at 21:21

score 1 · Answer 3 · answered Oct 25 '13 at 19:14

1

Does this solve the issue?

$ echo "^[[38;1;32mHello^[[39m" | sed -e 's/\^\[\[[0-9;]\{2,\}m//g'
Hello

cheers!!

answered Oct 25 '13 at 19:14

MacUsers

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No, it doesn't, because `^[` represents the ASCII Escape character (Control-[, code 27). – Armali Oct 30 '13 at 09:35
@Armali: don't understand your point. According to the OP's requirement, it should work. Can you post an example where it doesn't work? Cheers!! – MacUsers Oct 30 '13 at 15:51
Yes... `TERM=xterm tput setf 1|sed -e 's/\^\[\[[0-9;]\{2,\}m//g'|hexdump -C` – Armali Oct 31 '13 at 07:36
I don't think that what the OP is after. – MacUsers Oct 31 '13 at 11:29
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I think you mean `echo $'\033'"[38;1;32mHello"$'\033'"[39m" | sed -e 's/\^\[\[[0-9;]\{2,\}m//g'` (what you wrote can't be pasted successfully) ,and no it doesn't work. – Jasen Jul 01 '15 at 05:17

score 0 · Answer 4 · answered Jun 20 '23 at 08:55

Solution

The mostly voted answer did not work for me straight out of the box. It needed a small tweak.

HowTo:

Run the following in a bash shell or add the following code block to you existing list of aliases to be able to reuse the decolor alias in future.

## Decolor ANSI Colored Output
# example: (see preview in VSCode editor)
# >>> cat <filepath> | decolor | code -
alias decolor.styles='sed -E "s/\x1B\[([0-9]{1,2}(;[0-9]{1,2})*)?[m,K,H,f,J]//gm"'
alias decolor.reset='sed -E "s/\x1B\([A-Z]{1}(\x1B\[[m,K,H,f,J])?//gm"'
alias decolor='decolor.styles | decolor.reset'

Usage:

cat coloredtext.txt | decolor

Output:

PRESENT: /somepath/somefile_a.csv
PRESENT: /somepath/somefile_b.csv

Dummy Data

# File Name: coloredtext.txt
# [1m[32mPRESENT:(B[m [32m/somepath/somefile_a.csv(B[m
# [1m[32mPRESENT:(B[m [32m/somepath/somefile_b.csv(B[m
\x1B[1m\x1B[32mPRESENT:\x1B(B\x1B[m \x1B[32m/somepath/somefile_a.csv\x1B(B\x1B[m
\x1B[1m\x1B[32mPRESENT:\x1B(B\x1B[m \x1B[32m/somepath/somefile_b.csv\x1B(B\x1B[m

Remove ANSI color codes from a text file using bash

4 Answers4

Solution

Dummy Data

Linked

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