[Bug tui/14126] New: Color escape sequences don't work in tui mode

[Bug tui/14126] New: Color escape sequences don't work in tui mode

[jan at majutsushi dot net]

http://sourceware.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=14126

             Bug #: 14126
           Summary: Color escape sequences don't work in tui mode
           Product: gdb
           Version: unknown
            Status: NEW
          Severity: normal
          Priority: P2
         Component: tui
        AssignedTo: unassigned@sourceware.org
        ReportedBy: jan@majutsushi.net
    Classification: Unclassified


If TUI mode is enabled then coloring the prompt or output using escape
sequences doesn't work, the sequences are instead shown as-is.

Example:

In normal mode, "echo \033[32mFOO\033[0m\n" will print "FOO" in green. However,
if the TUI is enabled, it will print "^[[32mFOO^[[0m" instead. This makes
trying to make the output more readable rather difficult.

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[Bug tui/14126] Color escape sequences don't work in tui mode

[dilyan.palauzov at aegee dot org]

https://sourceware.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=14126

dilyan.palauzov at aegee dot org <dilyan.palauzov at aegee dot org> changed:

           What    |Removed                     |Added
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
                 CC|                            |dilyan.palauzov at aegee dot org

--- Comment #1 from dilyan.palauzov at aegee dot org <dilyan.palauzov at aegee dot org> ---
\w is expanded to the working directory, the problem with TUI and
extended-prompt are (only) the escape sequences.  The proposed patch below just
discards all non-printing characters, between \[ and \], in TUI mode.

diff --git a/gdb/doc/python.texi b/gdb/doc/python.texi
index a2df254..cab10d2 100644
--- a/gdb/doc/python.texi
+++ b/gdb/doc/python.texi
@@ -5137,7 +5137,8 @@ Substitute the current working directory.
 Begin a sequence of non-printing characters.  These sequences are
 typically used with the ESC character, and are not counted in the string
 length.  Example: ``\[\e[0;34m\](gdb)\[\e[0m\]'' will return a
-blue-colored ``(gdb)'' prompt where the length is five.
+blue-colored ``(gdb)'' prompt where the length is five.  In TUI mode
+these characters are discarded.
 @item \]
 End a sequence of non-printing characters.
 @end table
diff --git a/gdb/tui/tui-io.c b/gdb/tui/tui-io.c
index 97906ce..b77866a 100644
--- a/gdb/tui/tui-io.c
+++ b/gdb/tui/tui-io.c
@@ -232,6 +232,22 @@ tui_redisplay_readline (void)
   height = 1;
   for (in = 0; prompt && prompt[in]; in++)
     {
+      /* Drop characters from extended-prompt between \[ == \001 and \] = \002
+         The point is, that waddch prints ^ instead of control characters and
+         in turn the latter are not interpreted by the terminal. TUI prints
+         then ^ and this is ugly.
+
+         It seems there is no way to send escape characters to the terminal
+         under curses, at least not with fputc (c , stdout);
+
+         Skiping escape sequences, which are not within \[ and \] is hard, as
+         only the terminal has knowledge where the sequence ends and where the
+         actual input starts. */
+      if (prompt[in] == '\001')
+        {
+          do { in++; } while (prompt[in] != '\002' && prompt[in] != '\0');
+          continue;
+        }
       waddch (w, prompt[in]);
       getyx (w, line, col);
       if (col <= prev_col)

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[Bug tui/14126] Color escape sequences don't work in tui mode

[nav at bloom dot oscillate.io]

https://sourceware.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=14126

Nav <nav at bloom dot oscillate.io> changed:

           What    |Removed                     |Added
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
                 CC|                            |nav at bloom dot oscillate.io

--- Comment #6 from Nav <nav at bloom dot oscillate.io> ---
Apologies for posting on an old thread...

It seems this issue still occurs when GDB outputs responses for qRcmd commands.

My GDB server uses color escape sequences when returning responses to some
qRcmd commands, which works fine when TUI mode is disabled. But when TUI mode
is enabled, the escape sequences are ignored and printed in the output:

(gdb) mon lr porta
`[94mport[0m`, `[94mcfglr[0m`....

The proper output should be:

(gdb) mon lr porta
`port`, `cfglr`....

Where the foreground color of "port" and "cfglr" is set to "blue"

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[Bug tui/14126] Color escape sequences don't work in tui mode

[tromey at sourceware dot org]

https://sourceware.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=14126

Tom Tromey <tromey at sourceware dot org> changed:

           What    |Removed                     |Added
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
             Status|RESOLVED                    |REOPENED
         Resolution|FIXED                       |---
             Blocks|                            |32284

--- Comment #7 from Tom Tromey <tromey at sourceware dot org> ---
Reopening.


Referenced Bugs:

https://sourceware.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=32284
[Bug 32284] [meta] CLI Styling
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[Bug tui/14126] Color escape sequences don't work in tui mode

[tromey at sourceware dot org]

https://sourceware.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=14126

--- Comment #8 from Tom Tromey <tromey at sourceware dot org> ---
The issue might be that rcmd and remote_console_output work
one character at a time.

Ideally this wouldn't affect the TUI but I suspect it's maybe
a bit dumb about this.

However -- which gdb are you using?
I hacked gdbserver to colorize the "monitor help" output
and tried with gdb trunk.  This works... which I think
should be expected now that the TUI I/O stuff was removed.

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[Bug tui/14126] Color escape sequences don't work in tui mode

[nav at bloom dot oscillate.io]

https://sourceware.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=14126

--- Comment #9 from Nav <nav at bloom dot oscillate.io> ---
(In reply to Tom Tromey from comment #8)
> The issue might be that rcmd and remote_console_output work
> one character at a time.
> 
> Ideally this wouldn't affect the TUI but I suspect it's maybe
> a bit dumb about this.
> 
> However -- which gdb are you using?
> I hacked gdbserver to colorize the "monitor help" output
> and tried with gdb trunk.  This works... which I think
> should be expected now that the TUI I/O stuff was removed.

Hey, so I was using GDB 13.1, but I just built and tried 16.3, and the same
issue occurs. Works fine with TUI mode disabled, but not when it's enabled.

In case it helps, here's the raw response packet that my server sends to GDB,
in response to a qRcmd command:

$O601b5b39346d706f7274621b5b306d602c20601b5b39346d646472621b5b306d602c202244445242222c20307830303030303032342c20382d626974207c201b5b33336d307830301b5b306d20281b5b33336d301b5b306d2c201b5b33336d306230303030303030301b5b306d290a#db

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[Bug tui/14126] Color escape sequences don't work in tui mode

[tromey at sourceware dot org]

https://sourceware.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=14126

--- Comment #10 from Tom Tromey <tromey at sourceware dot org> ---
Sorry about this -- I forgot to enter TUI mode when doing
my tests :(

I tried again and I can reproduce the problem.
It's what I thought: the TUI I/O layer is too naive about
looking for terminal escape sequences.

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[Bug tui/14126] Color escape sequences don't work in tui mode

[tromey at sourceware dot org]

https://sourceware.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=14126

--- Comment #11 from Tom Tromey <tromey at sourceware dot org> ---
https://sourceware.org/pipermail/gdb-patches/2025-June/218702.html

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[Bug tui/14126] Color escape sequences don't work in tui mode

[cvs-commit at gcc dot gnu.org]

https://sourceware.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=14126

--- Comment #12 from Sourceware Commits <cvs-commit at gcc dot gnu.org> ---
The master branch has been updated by Tom Tromey <tromey@sourceware.org>:

https://sourceware.org/git/gitweb.cgi?p=binutils-gdb.git;h=7b18593a9ef94694e2a16ac25133aa8c19dc6a87

commit 7b18593a9ef94694e2a16ac25133aa8c19dc6a87
Author: Tom Tromey <tom@tromey.com>
Date:   Fri Jun 13 12:54:16 2025 -0600

    Fix handling of terminal escape sequences in TUI

    A user noticed that if the remote sends terminal escape sequences from
    the "monitor" command, then these will not be correctly displayed when
    in TUI mode.

    I tracked this down to remote.c emitting one character at a time --
    something the TUI output functions did not handle correctly.

    I decided in the end to fix in this in the ui-file layer, because the
    same bug seems to affect logging and, as is evidenced by the test case
    in this patch, Python output in TUI mode.

    The idea is simple: buffer escape sequences until they are either
    complete or cannot possibly be recognized by gdb.

    Regression tested on x86-64 Fedora 40.

    Bug: https://sourceware.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=14126
    Approved-By: Andrew Burgess <aburgess@redhat.com>

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[Bug tui/14126] Color escape sequences don't work in tui mode

[tromey at sourceware dot org]

https://sourceware.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=14126

Tom Tromey <tromey at sourceware dot org> changed:

           What    |Removed                     |Added
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
         Resolution|---                         |FIXED
             Status|REOPENED                    |RESOLVED

--- Comment #13 from Tom Tromey <tromey at sourceware dot org> ---
Fixed again for 17.1.
I'm not sure if I should update the target milestone or not so
I've left it.

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[Bug tui/14126] Color escape sequences don't work in tui mode

[nav at bloom dot oscillate.io]

https://sourceware.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=14126

--- Comment #14 from Nav <nav at bloom dot oscillate.io> ---
Created attachment 16156
  --> https://sourceware.org/bugzilla/attachment.cgi?id=16156&action=edit
Screenshot of color escape sequences working in new GDB build

(In reply to Tom Tromey from comment #13)
> Fixed again for 17.1.
> I'm not sure if I should update the target milestone or not so
> I've left it.

Have just built from the master branch and can confirm it's now working as
expected (see attached screenshot).

Thank you for sorting that so quickly!

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