On Fri 07 Nov 2025 at 10:10:57 (-0500), Greg Wooledge wrote: > On Fri, Nov 07, 2025 at 08:37:31 -0600, Mike McClain wrote: > > Since installing trixie apt show ... is displaying 'ESC[1m', 'ESC[0m' > > and the like. What might be the difference in my bookworm install to > > the new trixie install that would cause that? > > You've probably got the LESS variable set in your environment. I do > too. I get that too. > > If I run > > (unset LESS; apt show bash) > > or > > env -u LESS apt show bash > > then the raw control characters are passed through directly to the > terminal as intended.
I don't understand. When did less get involved in a simple command like apt show bash ? The only way I know in trixie for displaying the appearance as intended is: PAGER= apt show bash Who sets PAGER, I don't know. It's not shown in my environment. I've been using MANOPT='-P less' for years, which gives me paging, but also the bold and underlining that helps distinguish words having a particular meaning from the rest of the text. This is now screwed in trixie, in the same way as the OP's problem: man less unreadable MANOPT= man less unreadable MANOPT= man less | less -r readable, but bold/underlining gone MANOPT= man less | less -R readable, but bold/underlining gone PAGER= MANOPT= man less ½ readable, with bold/underlining By ½, I mean that you can read just the final part of any long document, depending on the size of your scrollback buffer (and forget that on a real Linux Console). Perhaps some earlier bits with speedy use of ^S/^Q. Cheers, David.
