How to get rid of ESC[ characters when using git diff on Mac OS X Mavericks?

Solution 1:

Do you have a LESS environment variable set? You can check using:

env | grep LESS

or:

echo $LESS

If so, you want to make sure the R option is in there. That allows the ANSI escape sequences to pass through unscathed, and they'll be rendered as colors in the terminal.

Just for reference, I use this:

export LESS=eFRX

Solution 2:

This works:

git config --global core.pager "less -r"

Solution 3:

Try "less -R" (big "R")

This worked for me:

git config core.pager 'less -R'

"less -R" vs. "less -r"

-R (big R) seems to be the safer version of -r (small r). So that's why I prefer the big R version.

Quote from man less:

-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. ANSI "color" escape sequences are sequences of the form:

ESC [ ... m

where the "..." is zero or more color specification characters For the purpose of keeping track of screen appearance, ANSI color escape sequences are assumed to not move the cursor. You can make less think that characters other than "m" can end ANSI color escape sequences by setting the environment variable LESSANSIENDCHARS to the list of characters which can end a color escape sequence. And you can make less think that characters other than the standard ones may appear between the ESC and the m by setting the environment variable LESSANSIMIDCHARS to the list of characters which can appear.

Solution 4:

The global pager configuration option within git, just sends the output stream to the more or less commands. You can get rid of the escape characters within this output by setting the global configuration option to either:

git config --global core.pager "more -R"

To continue using more as your pager or

git config --global core.pager "less -R"

To continue using less as your pager

Solution 5:

You change use the option -R Repaint the screen to remove all the buffered input.

export LESS="$LESS -R"