Removing colors from output

Question

I have some script that produces output with colors and I need to remove the ANSI codes.

#!/bin/bash

exec > >(tee log)   # redirect the output to a file but keep it on stdout
exec 2>&1

./somescript

The output is (in log file):

java (pid  12321) is running...@[60G[@[0;32m  OK  @[0;39m]

I didn't know how to put the ESC character here, so I put @ in its place.

I changed the script into:

#!/bin/bash

exec > >(tee log)   # redirect the output to a file but keep it on stdout
exec 2>&1

./somescript | sed -r "s/\x1B\[([0-9]{1,2}(;[0-9]{1,2})?)?[m|K]//g"

But now it gives me (in log file):

java (pid  12321) is running...@[60G[  OK  ]

How can I also remove this '@[60G?

Maybe there is a way to completely disable coloring for the entire script?

Answer 1

According to Wikipedia, the [m|K] in the sed command you're using is specifically designed to handle m (the color command) and K (the "erase part of line" command). Your script is trying to set absolute cursor position to 60 (^[[60G) to get all the OKs in a line, which your sed line doesn't cover.

(Properly, [m|K] should probably be (m|K) or [mK], because you're not trying to match a pipe character. But that's not important right now.)

If you switch that final match in your command to [mGK] or (m|G|K), you should be able to catch that extra control sequence.

./somescript | sed -r "s/\x1B\[([0-9]{1,3}(;[0-9]{1,2})?)?[mGK]//g"