Colored man pages with less and TERMCAP

[volodymyrprokopyuk]

Hi,

While the below snippet works in Zsh with Wezterm by rendering colored man pages

export LESS -RF
export LESS_TERMCAP_mb=$'\e[01;31m'
export LESS_TERMCAP_md=$'\e[01;38;5;74m'
export LESS_TERMCAP_me=$'\e[0m'
export LESS_TERMCAP_se=$'\e[0m'
export LESS_TERMCAP_so=$'\e[38;5;246m'
export LESS_TERMCAP_ue=$'\e[0m'
export LESS_TERMCAP_us=$'\e[04;38;5;146m'

The following adaptation in Fish and Wezterm does not render man pages in color

set -gx LESS -RF
set -gx LESS_TERMCAP_mb '\e[01;31m'
set -gx LESS_TERMCAP_md '\e[01;38;5;74m'
set -gx LESS_TERMCAP_me '\e[0m'
set -gx LESS_TERMCAP_se '\e[0m'
set -gx LESS_TERMCAP_so '\e[38;5;246m'
set -gx LESS_TERMCAP_ue '\e[0m'
set -gx LESS_TERMCAP_us '\e[04;38;5;146m'

Probably ANSI color escape sequences have to be defined in a special way that I cannot figure out.

Thank you!

[faho]

You want the \e to appear outside of quotes.

https://fishshell.com/docs/current/fish_for_bash_users.html#quoting:

There is no $'', instead the sequences that would transform are transformed when unquoted:

That means:

set -gx LESS -RF
set -gx LESS_TERMCAP_mb \e'[01;31m'
set -gx LESS_TERMCAP_md \e'[01;38;5;74m'
set -gx LESS_TERMCAP_me \e'[0m'
set -gx LESS_TERMCAP_se \e'[0m'
set -gx LESS_TERMCAP_so \e'[38;5;246m'
set -gx LESS_TERMCAP_ue \e'[0m'
set -gx LESS_TERMCAP_us \e'[04;38;5;146m'

Alternatively, use set_color:

set -gx LESS -RF
set -gx LESS_TERMCAP_mb (set_color --bold red)