Thanks for the suggestions everyone, but there are a lot of other control characters besides the backspace. If you are at a unix terminal, try this: 
script
ls
exit

[download]
Then look in typescript. You'll see what I mean. Actually, there is a semi-passable solution that does not involve perl: 
TERM=dumb script
ls
exit
cat typescript | col -b > readable.txt

[download]
This seems to work as long as all the commands you type after script work on a dumb terminal. I was just wondering if perl had a more robust solution. I had a look at Term::Cap, but I fail to understand how to use it. I feel there must be a solution because, after all, I can see the very text I want on the terminal screen -- it's all right there! -- until my buffer size is reached. Usually copy/paste with the mouse from terminal to emacs works ok, but it didn't work the other night when I was compiling a kernel -- the output exceeded my buffer size.

In reply to Re^2: Wanted: humanly readable `script` output by mrslopenk
in thread Wanted: humanly readable `script` output by mrslopenk

Title:
Use:  <p> text here (a paragraph) </p>
and:  <code> code here </code>
to format your post, it's "PerlMonks-approved HTML":


  • Posts are HTML formatted. Put <p> </p> tags around your paragraphs. Put <code> </code> tags around your code and data!
  • Titles consisting of a single word are discouraged, and in most cases are disallowed outright.
  • Read Where should I post X? if you're not absolutely sure you're posting in the right place.
  • Please read these before you post! —
  • Posts may use any of the Perl Monks Approved HTML tags:
    a, abbr, b, big, blockquote, br, caption, center, col, colgroup, dd, del, details, div, dl, dt, em, font, h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6, hr, i, ins, li, ol, p, pre, readmore, small, span, spoiler, strike, strong, sub, summary, sup, table, tbody, td, tfoot, th, thead, tr, tt, u, ul, wbr
  • You may need to use entities for some characters, as follows. (Exception: Within code tags, you can put the characters literally.)
            For:     Use:
    & &amp;
    < &lt;
    > &gt;
    [ &#91;
    ] &#93;
  • Link using PerlMonks shortcuts! What shortcuts can I use for linking?
  • See Writeup Formatting Tips and other pages linked from there for more info.