Unescaping formatted Terminal text

[Peter Otten]

Gnarlodious wrote:

> This may be happening because I am using Python 3.2 which includes
> "curses" to format output. When running:
> 
> pydoc.render_doc(sys.modules[__name__])
> 
> in Terminal I see FUNCTIONS
> 
> when the same output goes to HTTP I see FFUUNNCCTTIIOONNSS

What you are seeing isn't an ANSI escape sequence, it's actually Char-
Backspace-Char (e. g. "F\bF\U\bU...") which is interpreted as a bold Char by 
the "less" utility.

> Is there an easy way to strip ANSI escaped characters from output for
> CGI rendering?

pydoc.render_doc(module, renderer=pydoc.plaintext)

or even 

pydoc.render_doc(module, renderer=pydoc.html)