Man page highlighting causes text artifacts in front of left parens

[BlueElectivire]

What steps will reproduce the bug?

1. Set bat as manpager using the method in the docs (export MANPAGER="bat -plman")
2. Open a manpage which contains a left paren character (which is virtually all of them)

What happens?
Left parens get highlighted, but in front of them appear the characters "22m" in a different color.

Screenshot:

This also happens if there isn't a space before the parens, where it is more evident the "22m" doesn't belong:

Notice that this doesn't appear on every single open parens, only on the ones highlighted.

What did you expect to happen instead?
The relevant characters should be highlighted without adding the artifacts.

How did you install bat?
pacman

---

bat version and environment

Software version

bat 0.26.1 (v0.25.0-402-g979ba226)

Operating system

• OS: Linux (Arch Linux rolling)
• Kernel: 6.18.3-arch1-1

Command-line

bat -plman --diagnostic

Environment variables

BAT_CACHE_PATH=<not set>
BAT_CONFIG_PATH=<not set>
BAT_OPTS=<not set>
BAT_PAGER=<not set>
BAT_PAGING=<not set>
BAT_STYLE=<not set>
BAT_TABS=<not set>
BAT_THEME=<not set>
COLORTERM=truecolor
LANG=en_IL
LC_ALL=<not set>
LESS=<not set>
MANPAGER='bat -plman'
NO_COLOR=<not set>
PAGER=<not set>
SHELL=/usr/bin/zsh
TERM=xterm-ghostty
XDG_CACHE_HOME=/home/blue/.cache
XDG_CONFIG_HOME=/home/blue/.config

System Config file

Could not read contents of '/etc/bat/config': No such file or directory (os error 2).

Config file

--theme=ansi

Custom assets metadata

Could not read contents of '/home/blue/.cache/bat/metadata.yaml': No such file or directory (os error 2).

Custom assets

'/home/blue/.cache/bat' not found

Compile time information

• Profile: release
• Target triple: x86_64-unknown-linux-gnu
• Family: unix
• OS: linux
• Architecture: x86_64
• Pointer width: 64
• Endian: little
• CPU features: fxsr,sse,sse2
• Host: x86_64-unknown-linux-gnu

Less version

> less --version
less 685 (PCRE2 regular expressions)
Copyright (C) 1984-2025  Mark Nudelman

less comes with NO WARRANTY, to the extent permitted by law.
For information about the terms of redistribution,
see the file named README in the less distribution.
Home page: https://greenwoodsoftware.com/less

[ValerioCeccarelli]

I have a similar problem:

MANPAGER="batcat -plman" man 2 select

this command correctly make man uses batcat but then it creates artifacts

Note that in my case there is also [0m in front of 22m, and for reference I am on Ubuntu 24.04.3 with 6.6.87.2-microsoft-standard-WSL2 and I am using the Windows Terminal.

ideas

MANPAGER="cat" man 2 select

If i use cat as a pager just to have the simpler command i know to print things i get:

As you can see man is producing some bold text as the documentation says (here):

The following conventions apply to the SYNOPSIS section and can be
used as a guide in other sections.
bold text -> type exactly as shown.

Indeed 22m is the ANSI code that make the text return normal after a bold section (that is 1m). You can see it with this example:

echo -e "\e[1mBold text\e[22m normal text"

I think bat should ignore this escape sequences and produce his colors with -plman, indeed:

echo -e "\e[1mBold text\e[22m normal text" | bat -plman

this works fine with no artifact. So there is something specific with the integration between man and cat.

temp solution

Usually these tools are able to detect if their standard output is redirected, and in that case their are instructed to not produce colors.

man 2 select | bat -plman

Indeed with this command everting is fine.