formatting - htop output to human readable file

Question

I've tried piping htop to a text file (e.g. htop > text.txt) but it gives me text garbled by formatting strings (see below). Is there a way to get nicer, human readable output?

^[7^[[?47h^[[1;30r^[[m^[[4l^[[?1h^[=^[[m^[[?1000h^[[m^[[m^[[H^[[2J^[[1B  ^[[36m1  ^[[m^[[1m[^[[m^[[32m||||||||||^[[31m||||||||||^[[30m^[[1m                                                            
     22.2%^[[m]^[[m     ^[[36mTasks: ^[[1m159^[[m^[[36m total, ^[[32m^[[1m5^[[m^[[36m running^[[3;3H2  ^[[m^[[1m[^[[30m                                                                                
      0.0%^[[m]^[[m     ^[[36mLoad average: ^[[30m^[[1m1.11 ^[[m^[[m1.28 ^[[1m1.31 ^[[4;3H^[[m^[[36m3  ^[[m^[[1m[^[[m^[[32m||||||||||^[[30m^[[1m                                                       
                    11.1%^[[m]^[[m     ^[[36mUptime: ^[[1m9 days, 22:04:51^[[5;3H^[[m^[[36m4  ^[[m^[[1m[^[[30m                                                                                      0.0
%^[[m]^[[6;3H^[[m^[[36m5  ^[[m^[[1m[^[[m^[[31m||||||||||^[[30m^[[1m                                                                           11.1%^[[m]^[[7;3H^[[m^[[36m6  ^[[m^[[1m[^[[30m           

Answer 1

htop author here.

No, there's no "nice" way to get the output of htop piped into a file. It is an interactive application and uses terminal redraw routines to produce its interface (therefore, piping it makes as much sense as, for example, piping vim into a text file -- you'll get similar results).

To get the information about your processes in a text format, use "ps". For example, ps auxf > file.txt gives you lots of easy to parse information (or ps aux if you do not wish tree-formatting -- see man ps for more options).