Escape Artist

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# Escape Artist Help

Hello! This is the help page for Escape Artist, a little tool for visualizing ANSI escape codes in terminal applications.

Q: What are ANSI escape codes?

A: "Invisible" byte sequences that are printed by console applications to stdout and stderr, then interpreted by your terminal emulator. For example, an escape code might tell the terminal to paint all text green until further notice. There are several kinds of escape sequences, this page is a great reference.

Q: What does Escape Artist do?

A: It launches your shell in a pseudoterminal (AKA a pty) and starts a web interface where you can view the output of the shell with escape sequences made visible. You can mouse over individual escape codes to see their raw bytes and (sometimes) a description of what the escape code does.

Q: Why is this useful?

A: It's kinda like View Source for the terminal. Maybe you're curious about what your shell is doing to render your cool new prompt. Maybe you work on a shell or a TUI application and you need to debug it.

Q: How can I configure Escape Artist?

A: Run Escape Artist with the `-h` or `--help` flag to see all possible options.