Linux more: remove nonprintable characters

Question

I am using Python to capture the output of Linux more. However, the file contains the characters:

<--- More --->^M ^M

How do I use Python to clean the lines? Or use more once more time to cleanit up?

If you are capturing the output in a program why do you need to use `more`? Just capture the output without piping it through `more`. — Jim Garrison, Nov 14 '11 at 17:10
This might help http://stackoverflow.com/questions/92438/stripping-non-printable-characters-from-a-string-in-python — Narendra Yadala, Nov 14 '11 at 17:11
The program that I am exec'ing is using 'more'.. I cann't do anything — user963986, Nov 14 '11 at 17:16

score 2 · Answer 1 · answered Nov 14 '11 at 17:36

This isn't guaranteed to work, but you should try setting PAGER to cat in the environment of the child process. You can't do that with subprocess.call but you can do it with subprocess.Popen:

childenv = os.environ.copy()
childenv['PAGER'] = 'cat'

proc = subprocess.Popen(executable="yourprogram",
                        args=["yourprogram", ...],
                        env=childenv,
                        stdout=subprocess.PIPE,
                        ...)

# proc.stdout *may* now be free of `more` detritus

Linux more: remove nonprintable characters

1 Answers1