Re: help with M-x term

[Tim X <timx@nospam.dev.null>]

op132650c@mail.telepac.pt writes:

>>   Is there some reason why you aren't using M-x shell?
>
> I don't want to detour the attention about the question of William Daffer, but i
> also prefer M-x term instead of M-x shell, because the output of M-x shell is
> not well formatted compared to M-x term.
>
> Now i put the following question:
>
> What's the difference between M-x shell and M-x term?
>
> How can i configure M-x shell to be well formatted?
>
> One example of the bad formatation of the output of M-x shell, is when i do ls
> -la.
> I get the following:
>
> ]]] file1     ]]] file3^]]]     ]]] file5^]]]
>  ]]] file2   ]]] file4^]]]     ]]] file6^]]]
>
>
> With the M-x term i get well formatted:
>
> file1   file3   file5
> file2   file4   file6
>

The difference in 'formatting' you have observed is because M-x shell
doesn't understand ANSI escape codes for colour. When you use the ls
command and have it configured to display the output using different
colours for different file types, it does this by using andsi colour
escape sequences. However, M-x shell does not understand these "out of
the box". 

There are at least two solutions -

1. configure ls not to use escape sequences when displaying a
   directory listing in a dumb terminal - one of the ls --color=
   values should do this

2. Enable support for ansi colours in comint derived modes - do an
   apropos for ansi color. M-x shell will then be able to interpret
   the ansi colour codes.

3. Use M-x term

Tim



-- 
tcross (at) rapttech dot com dot au