[rspec-users] Color output in pagers

Paul Hinze
2009-12-02T15:40:15Z

P. A. <lists at ruby-forum.com> on 2009-12-02 at
09:08:
> Is it possible to get color text in less, more or other pagers while
> piping the color output of Cucumber and RSpec?

Have a look at these options for `less`:

>From LESS(1) man page:
> -r or --raw-control-chars
>
>       Causes "raw" control characters to be displayed.  The
default is to
>       display control characters using the caret notation; for example, a
>       control-A (octal 001) is displayed as "^A".  Warning: when
the -r
>       option is used, less cannot keep track of the actual appearance of
>       the screen (since this depends on how the screen responds to  each
>       type of control character).  Thus, various display problems may
>       result, such as long lines being split in the wrong place.
>
> -R or --RAW-CONTROL-CHARS
>
>       Like  -r,  but  only ANSI "color" escape sequences are
output in
>       "raw" form.  Unlike -r, the screen appearance is maintained
correctly
>       in most cases.

You can set default options for less to use via the LESS evironment variable.
As an example, here is the value of mine:

$ echo $LESS
-X -e -R

Cheers,

Paul