I humbly ask my question...

I am running Perl in debug mode on Windows 2000 in a console window (a DOS box). When I go to help by typing 'h' (or '|h') in the debug interface, I see what looks like embedded formatting codes that contain left arrows and square brackets, numbers and letters (I have tried to reproduce one line faithfully here by using code brackets interspersed with entity notation for the left arrow):

←[1ma←[0m [←[4;mline]        Delete the action for←[4;mline.

These sequences or formatting codes show on every line, around every command character. I would like the formatting codes to go away, or be interpreted as whatever effect they are meant to apply, because in their raw display, they obfuscate the characters that help is trying to explain. I see this effect on all three of my work machines, and whether I run cmd or command, so I presume it must be something that happens to others. I have looked around for answers, including reading the debugger faq on this site, but no one seems to have any comment on this.

Thanks for any help you can provide.

I feel that I must be missing something obvious. I would be happy with a solid pointer to where I can read more about what I might be doing wrong.

In reply to Stymied by formatting characters by sailorsonoftailor

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