AHA(1) General Commands Manual AHA(1)
NAME
aha — Convert ANSI escape sequences to HTML
SYNOPSIS
aha [-bhlnprsvwx] [-c file] [-f file] [-i X] [-L LANG] [-t TITLE]
[-y STYLE]
DESCRIPTION
aha reads ECMA-48 SGR-colored text from the standard input, converts it
to colored HTML and writes it to the standard output. The options are
as follows:
-b, --black
Style HTML output to use a black background with white text.
-c file, --css file
Adds the given css file to the output. In fact just adds <link
rel="stylesheet" href=" file " /> to the header.
-f file
Read from file instead of from the standard input.
-h, --help, -?
Print help for aha to the standard output.
-i X, --iso X
Use the ISO-8859-X character encoding instead of UTF-8 for the
output, where X is a number from 1-16.
-l, --line-fix
Use a fix for inputs using control sequences to change the cur-
sor position. This is a hot fix, thus it may not work with
every program.
-L LANG, --lang LANG
Uses the ISO-639-1 code LANG for the language.
-n, --no-header
Do not enclose HTML output in <html>, <head> and <body> tags.
-p, --pink
Style HTML output to use a pink background.
-r, --ignore-cr
Ignore all carriage-returns (ASCII sign 13, \r) which may lead
to double new lines in html.
-s, --stylesheet
Use a stylesheet instead of inline styles.
-t TITLE, --title TITLE
Set the HTML document title to TITLE instead of "stdin" or the
filename.
-v, --version
Print version number of aha to the standard output and exit.
-w, --word-wrap
Wrap long lines in the html output. Works with CSS3 supporting
browsers and many older ones.
-x, --no-xml
Don't use doctype xml but html (may useful for old browsers like
IE)
-y STYLE, --style STYLE
Sets the style used in the <body> element to STYLE after styles
set by other parameters.
EXAMPLES
Create an HTML file with a black background, a custom title and a larger
font-size using aha's help:
$ aha -h | aha -b -t 'the awesome aha help' -y 'font-size:1.875em'
> aha-help.html
Create an HTML file with a white background using the output of diff(1):
$ diff -u --color=always oldfile.c newfile.c | aha > diff.html
Create an HTML file with a black background from the output of htop(1).
You have to use option -l due the other new-line-commands htop uses:
$ echo q | htop | aha -b -l > htop.html
Create an HTML file from the output of this man page. man(1) uses bold
and underline formatting from nroff(1), which ul(1) converts to SGR:
$ MAN_KEEP_FORMATTING=1 COLUMNS=80 man aha | ul | aha >
man-aha.html
SEE ALSO
console_codes(4)
Control Functions for Coded Character Sets, Ecma, ECMA-48, 61, 1991.
AUTHORS
The aha utility is maintained by Alexander Matthes ‘Ziz’
<ziz@mailbox.org>.
BUGS
Blinking text using the HTML tag <blink> and the css property
text-decoration:blink have been deprecated on modern browsers, thus re-
quiring the use of option -s and redefining the .blink css class.
Debian August 4, 2020 AHA(1)
Generated by dwww version 1.16 on Sat Oct 3 06:46:55 CEST 2026.