strip color from TProcess output [solved]

[Michael Collier]

Hi

I use TProcess to execute nodejs application, which in turn outputs characters which I'm guessing are for colour control.

The colours don't show up in lazarus memo, I'll try pasting below but may not paste properly, I guess I could scan the output and strip characters within certain range, has anyone done this before? Or suggest different component to display console output?

'TEXT_HERE'

[marcov]

Those are probably so called ansi escape codes. Google and find out....

[Roland57]

Hi.

If I were you, I would execute one time the application with redirection of the output to a file, so that I have a good sample of the output. After that I would write a function for cleaning the output, maybe using regular expressions.

Or I would check if the application hasn't an option to disable colored output.

[Michael Collier]

I guess I'll have to strip the codes out. I've tried using online package manager to install rich edit controls  to display the colours (rather than stripping them out). But in each case the IDE reports that a file cannot be found (I'm on linux at the moment) - despite including the relevant package and being able to drop the control on a form at design time.

packages:
LazRichView
RichMemo

[Roland57]

I don't believe that these components (RichMemo, LazRichView) can be useful in that case.

[cdbc]

Hi
What marcov said, they look like 'ansi escape codes', the units: crt, video, keybord amo, uses them, you can too, have a look here: https://github.com/Warfley/LazTermUtils if you need to parse them to show the colors...
Regards Benny

[Edson]

Those characters are not only coloring escaping sequences but screen control sequences too.

You can use https://github.com/t-edson/UnTerminal. It's a wrapper for TProcess and recognizes most of the VT100 sequences screen controls, ignoring color sequences so you can show it in a simple Textbox.

[MarkMLl]

Also a possible xref to https://forum.lazarus.freepascal.org/index.php/topic,67337.msg519191.html#msg519191 which I've just "knocked together" to use a TRichMemo to display coloured output in a logging (i.e. non-interactive) context.

Note the format of those escape sequences: <Esc>[ <params> <operator> i.e. postfix like Forth etc. That implies that they are ANSI AKA (historically) VT100, but are distinct from the older e.g. VT52. In practice on Linux they're likely to be determined by the content of the TERM shell/environment variable, via termcap/terminfo etc.

MarkMLl

[Michael Collier]

You can use https://github.com/t-edson/UnTerminal. It's a wrapper for TProcess and recognizes most of the VT100 sequences screen controls, ignoring color sequences so you can show it in a simple Textbox.

This solved the problem for me, thanks