Added blog post

1 files changed, 74 insertions, 0 deletions

diff --git a/src/blog/2022-09-05-man-col/man-col.md b/src/blog/2022-09-05-man-col/man-col.md
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e5f1b44
--- /dev/null
+++ b/src/blog/2022-09-05-man-col/man-col.md
@@ -0,0 +1,74 @@
+# Pipe man into col -b to get rid of ^H
+
+The man page reading club is returning soon. In the meantime,
+here is a short post on a trick related to `man` itself that I skipped in the
+[first post of the series](../2022-05-29-man).
+
+## Vi rocks
+
+A cool feature of vi-like editors is that you can insert the
+output a command in the file you are editing, without doing any awkard
+copy-pasting. You can do this with the `r` ex command:
+
+```
+:r !date
+```
+
+Inserts the output of the `date` command on a new line. You can also
+use the `!` (bang) command, combined with a motion, to feed the
+text between the cursor and the target of the motion to a command and
+replace it with the output of the command itself. For example
+I often use `!}fmt` to format the next paragraph when I am writing
+an email.
+
+## Man pages and ANSI escape codes
+
+Unfortunately, if you try to use this feature to include parts of a man page,
+you might not like the result. Typing `:r !man man | head` gives
+
+```
+MAN(1)                      General Commands Manual                     MAN(1)
+
+N^HNA^HAM^HME^HE
+     m^Hma^Han^Hn - display manual pages
+
+S^HSY^HYN^HNO^HOP^HPS^HSI^HIS^HS
+     m^Hma^Han^Hn [-^H-a^Hac^Hcf^Hfh^Hhk^Hkl^Hlw^Hw] [-^H-C^HC _^Hf_^Hi_^Hl_^He] [-^H-M^HM _^Hp_^Ha_^Ht_^Hh] [-^H-m^Hm _^Hp_^Ha_^Ht_^Hh] [-^H-S^HS _^Hs_^Hu_^Hb_^Hs_^He_^Hc_^Ht_^Hi_^Ho_^Hn]
+         [[-^H-s^Hs] _^Hs_^He_^Hc_^Ht_^Hi_^Ho_^Hn] _^Hn_^Ha_^Hm_^He _^H._^H._^H.
+
+D^HDE^HES^HSC^HCR^HRI^HIP^HPT^HTI^HIO^HON^HN
+```
+
+Not cool! This happens because manual pages are not made of plain text. They
+contain *ANSI escape codes* to provide some basic formatting, like
+bold text and whatnot (you might or might not see them, depending on the
+capabilities of your terminal emulator). This is a complex topic and I don't
+know much about it. Check out the excellent post
+[Anatomy of a Terminal Emulator](https://poor.dev/terminal-anatomy)
+by [poor.dev](https://poor.dev) if you want to learn more.
+
+Long story short, the workaround is included in the man page itself:
+
+```
+When using -c, most terminal devices are unable to show the
+markup.  To print the output of man to the terminal with markup
+but without using a pager, pipe it to ul(1).  To remove the
+markup, pipe the output to col(1) -b instead.
+```
+
+Indeed, using `:r !man man | col -b | head` gives:
+
+```
+MAN(1)                      General Commands Manual                     MAN(1)
+
+NAME
+     man - display manual pages
+
+SYNOPSIS
+     man [-acfhklw] [-C file] [-M path] [-m path] [-S subsection]
+         [[-s] section] name ...
+
+DESCRIPTION
+```
+
+Hooray!