[please CC me on replies] Hi folks,
I noticed the following commit. commit 700d8235a391fdc8aa0fcdcf58ebc22bc6800ef0 Author: Pádraig Brady <[email protected]> AuthorDate: Sat Oct 10 11:33:58 2026 +0100 Commit: Pádraig Brady <[email protected]> CommitDate: Sat Oct 10 21:02:48 2026 +0100 all: only markup --help when outputting to tty Since v9.10 (Feb 2026) --help always outputs bold and hyperlinks even when output was not a tty, as this was thought more useful with pagers and grep etc. This change makes the more conservative choice of only outputting markup to tty so that users who do not have less setup to display color (-R), or users who enable color by default in grep, get improved output (though without URLs etc.) * src/system.h (oputs_): Call isatty() when not forcing markup with $IN_HELP2MAN. Also reverse the double negatives to a more natural form. * man/local.mk: Remove redundant assignment of $TERM. * doc/coreutils.texi (common options): Mention that --help markup requires output to be a tty, and that $IN_HELP2MAN overrides that. * NEWS: Mention the change in behavior. I recommend reverting it, or at least dropping the `isatty()` condition such that whatever you would send to a terminal device, you submit to a pipeline. Two reasons I recommend that are: 1. a lengthy philosophical musing on the design of the Unix terminal interface and how the decision to prepare output differently depending on isatty(3), perhaps pioneered by GNU fileutils 30 years ago or longer, was mistaken;[1] and 2. GNU less(1) is expected default to `-R` behavior in v712 anyway.[2] I gather this matter has led to much gnashing of teeth by people who want their pipelines scrubbed of terminal/Teletype escape sequences. Assuming that the coreutils developers take my advice, I invite such people to come argue with me about this on the groff at gnu list rather than here. Regards, Branden [1] First, if the isatty(3) camp's premises are correct, ask yourself why the utilities col(1), ul(1), and colcrt(1) existed. https://www.tuhs.org/cgi-bin/utree.pl?file=V7/usr/man/man1/col.1 https://www.tuhs.org/cgi-bin/utree.pl?file=3BSD/usr/man/man1/ul.1 https://www.tuhs.org/cgi-bin/utree.pl?file=3BSD/usr/man/man1/colcrt.1 If you want the lengthy philosophical musing, here it is. https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=312935#19 [2] https://github.com/gwsw/less/commit/5ee3ca4d52db313df7a68c4e0420157d2887e31e
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