The #1 Guide to Fixing Weird Manpage Syntax in 2025
Struggling with garbled characters and weird syntax in Linux/macOS manpages? Our 2025 guide explains why it happens and provides simple, effective fixes.
Alex Porter
A Linux sysadmin and open-source enthusiast with over a decade of experience.
The #1 Guide to Fixing Weird Manpage Syntax in 2025
You’ve been there. You type `man some-command`, ready for a quick answer, and instead, you’re greeted by a wall of gibberish: `^H`, `\fI`, `\[char173]`, and other cryptic artifacts. It feels like your terminal is haunted. Is the manpage broken? Is your system possessed? Relax. You’ve just stumbled upon a digital fossil, and in 2025, fixing it is easier than ever.
This isn’t a bug; it’s a feature of a bygone era. Manpages (manual pages) are formatted using a system called `troff` (or its modern GNU version, `groff`), which was designed in the 1970s to typeset documents for print. The weird characters you see are formatting codes that your terminal isn’t interpreting correctly. This guide will walk you through why it happens and provide a definitive toolkit to make your manpages clean, readable, and genuinely useful again.
Why Do Manpages Look So Strange? A Quick History Lesson
Imagine a time before WYSIWYG editors, before even widespread graphical interfaces. To create formatted documents—with bold text, italics, and proper spacing—programmers used markup languages. HTML and Markdown are modern examples, but manpages use an older, more arcane system called `troff`.
`troff` commands are embedded directly into the text file of the manpage. For instance, to make a word bold, the source file might contain `\fBword\fR`. The `\fB` says “start bold,” and the `\fR` says “return to Roman (normal) font.” When you run `man ls`, a program called `groff` processes this source file and sends the output to a “pager”—usually a program called `less`.
The problem arises when `less` isn't configured to understand the special control characters `groff` uses to represent bolding, underlining, or special symbols. Instead of rendering bold text, it just prints the raw codes, leaving you to decipher the mess.
The Usual Suspects: Common Manpage Gibberish and What It Means
Recognizing the patterns is the first step to understanding the problem. Here are some of the most common bits of weird syntax you’ll encounter.
| Weird Syntax | What It Means | How It Should Look |
|---|---|---|
word^H_word or repeated characters |
Backspace and overstrike. An old trick to simulate bold text on printers. | word |
\fBtext\fR |
Font Bold (`B`) and Font Roman (`R`). | text |
\fItext\fR |
Font Italic (`I`) and Font Roman (`R`). | text |
\[char...], \[em], \[hy] |
Special characters, like an em-dash (—) or a hyphen (-). | — or - |
ESC[1m, ESC[22m, etc. |
ANSI escape codes for color and style. These are actually the *correct* modern way to do it, but your pager might not be processing them. | (The text would appear bolded or colored, not with visible codes) |
Solution 1: The Environment Variable Fix (The 90% Solution)
For the vast majority of modern Linux and macOS systems, the fix is incredibly simple. You just need to tell your pager, `less`, to interpret the formatting codes instead of printing them literally. You do this by setting an environment variable.
Open your terminal and run this command:
export LESS="-R"
Let's break this down:
export LESS=...: This sets the `LESS` environment variable, which controls the default options for the `less` command.-Ror--RAW-CONTROL-CHARS: This flag tells `less` to output raw control characters, including ANSI color and style escape codes. This is the magic key that allows your terminal to render bold, underlines, and colors correctly.
Now, try opening a manpage again: `man ls`. It should look clean and properly formatted!
Making the Fix Permanent
The `export` command only lasts for your current terminal session. To avoid typing it every time, add it to your shell's startup file.
- For Bash users (the default on many Linux systems): Add the line to your
~/.bashrcor~/.bash_profilefile.echo 'export LESS="-R"' >> ~/.bashrc && source ~/.bashrc - For Zsh users (the default on modern macOS): Add the line to your
~/.zshrcfile.echo 'export LESS="-R"' >> ~/.zshrc && source ~/.zshrc
This single change will likely solve 90% of all manpage formatting issues you encounter.
Solution 2: Using a Smarter Pager
If the `LESS` variable trick doesn't work, or if you want an even better viewing experience, you can switch your default pager. The `PAGER` environment variable tells the system which program to use for displaying long content like manpages.
Option A: Meet `most`
The `most` pager is a powerful alternative to `less`. It handles formatting beautifully out of the box and has features like horizontal scrolling (a lifesaver for wide manpages). It's often called the "color `less`."
First, install it using your package manager:
# On Debian/Ubuntu
sudo apt-get install most
# On Fedora/CentOS
sudo dnf install most
# On macOS (using Homebrew)
brew install most
Then, set it as your default pager. You can do this temporarily for the current session:
export PAGER=most
Or permanently by adding that line to your ~/.bashrc or ~/.zshrc file.
Option B: Modern Tools like `bat`
`bat` is a `cat` clone with syntax highlighting and Git integration. It also has a helper utility, `batman`, that can be used to render manpages with beautiful colors and formatting.
After installing `bat`, you can set it up to handle manpages by adding this to your shell's config file (.bashrc or .zshrc):
export MANPAGER="sh -c 'col -bx | bat -l man -p'"
This command pipeline is more complex, but the result is a hyper-modern, syntax-highlighted manpage experience.
Solution 3: Exporting Manpages to Other Formats (PDF, HTML)
Sometimes you just want to read the manual in a different application, save it for later, or share it. `man` has powerful built-in flags for converting pages to other formats.
Exporting to Plain Text
To get a clean text file without any formatting codes, use `col` to filter out the backspace characters (`^H`).
man ls | col -b > ls_man.txt
Exporting to HTML
This is a fantastic and underused feature. You can convert any manpage directly to an HTML file, perfect for viewing in a web browser.
man -Thtml ls > ls_man.html
Open `ls_man.html` in your browser, and you'll have a perfectly formatted, searchable, and linkable document.
Exporting to PDF
For the ultimate in portability, you can create a PDF. This usually involves a two-step process: `man` converts the page to PostScript, and then another tool (like `ps2pdf`) converts the PostScript to a PDF.
man -t ls | ps2pdf - ls_man.pdf
This command tells `man` to create PostScript output (`-t`), pipes (`|`) it to `ps2pdf`, which reads from standard input (`-`) and outputs to `ls_man.pdf`.
Advanced Troubleshooting: When Nothing Else Works
If you're still seeing garbage characters after trying the solutions above, you might be facing a deeper configuration issue.
- Check Your Locale: Ensure your system's language and character encoding settings are correct. Most modern systems should be set to UTF-8. You can check with `locale`. If it's not set correctly, you may need to configure it. A common fix is to ensure this line is in your shell profile:
export LANG=en_US.UTF-8 - Check Your
TERMVariable: The `TERM` environment variable tells applications what kind of terminal they're running in. It should be set to something that supports color and modern features, likexterm-256color. Check it withecho $TERM. If it’s set to something basic like `dumb` or `vt100`, you’ll have problems.
Conclusion: Taming the Manual for Good
The weird syntax in manpages is a ghost from computing's past, a relic of a time when text formatting was a low-level, explicit task. But it's not a problem you have to live with. By understanding that the issue lies in how formatting codes are interpreted, you can easily fix it.
For most people, setting `export LESS="-R"` in their shell profile is the one-and-done solution. For those seeking a more powerful experience, tools like `most` and `bat` offer a modern take on a classic utility. And for ultimate portability, exporting to HTML or PDF puts the power of the manual right where you need it.
So the next time you see `\fB` in a manpage, don't despair. You now have a complete toolkit to banish the gibberish and make the command line a more readable, friendly place.