terminal output to file creates multiple duplicate characters

You can get the man page into Preview as a PDF as leroydouglas shared, or you can do the following to produce a formatted text output:

groff -Tutf8 -man /usr/share/man/man1/defaults.1 | more

or

groff -Tutf8 -man /usr/share/man/man1/defaults.1 > ~/Desktop/defaults.txt

where the latter renders (abbreviated) in the text file as the following when viewed with the more pager, and not Quick Look which doubles the characters:

because in my Terminal preferences, I have set the bold text to that blue color for the bolded elements in the man page.

If you have to have a normal output text file to view in Quick Look:

man defaults | col -bx > defaults.txt

You could even just enter the man page name (e.g. defaults) on the command line, then right-click on it, and choose Open man Page from the contextual menu. That will pop open another custom profile Terminal window:

wrcooke wrote:

This has bugged me from time to time. When I try to send a terminal command to a file I will get a number of duplicated letters. For example, in Terminal I type "man defaults > ~/Desktop/filename.txt"

This is an example of what I get. Any idea's how to prevent this? Just need to do this sort of thing every once in a while. Has occurred in various OS's

Thanks in advance

Bill

ddeeffaauullttss [--ccuurrrreennttHHoosstt | --hhoosstt _h_o_s_t_n_a_m_e] { _d_o_m_a_i_n_s | find _w_o_r_d | _h_e_l_p }

DDEESSCCRRIIPPTTIIOONN

DDeeffaauullttss allows users to read, write, and delete Mac OS X user defaults

from a command-line shell. Mac OS X applications and other programs use the

defaults system to record user preferences and other information that must

I see the same error as given. Full stop.

What if you try a different approach from Terminal:

 man -t defaults | open -f -a Preview

or from your Safari browser, copy and paste:

x-man-page://defaults

Command S will save to your location of choice if this is what you want as well.