ANSI sanitizer#

Use _ansi_sanitizer when captured terminal output can reach a LaTeX Sphinx build. It removes terminal escape/control sequences from text nodes before LaTeX renders them. HTML and other builders are left unchanged.

Enable it#

Add the extension to conf.py:

extensions += [
    "scikitplot._externals._sphinx_ext._ansi_sanitizer",
]

There are no extension configuration values. The sanitizer connects to doctree-resolved and runs only when app.builder.format == "latex".

Plain-string use#

The same parser is available without running a Sphinx build:

from scikitplot._externals._sphinx_ext._ansi_sanitizer import (
    strip_terminal_controls,
)

clean = strip_terminal_controls("\x1b[31merror\x1b[0m")
assert clean == "error"

strip_terminal_controls requires a string and raises TypeError for other input types. It keeps printable text, tabs, line feeds and carriage returns while removing supported ECMA-48 style control sequences and remaining C0/C1 control characters.

Why this is narrower than a generic regex#

The implementation distinguishes control-sequence forms instead of using one catch-all expression. That matters for truncated/two-byte escapes and operating-system command sequences: over-greedy removal can consume ordinary visible text. Unterminated string sequences are handled conservatively so printable text is not discarded merely because captured output was truncated.

When not to use it#

This extension is not an HTML terminal renderer and does not translate ANSI colors into CSS. Use it when the desired contract is remove terminal controls from LaTeX text, not when preserving terminal styling is required.