Funny characters returned from read function of Net_SSH2 library (phpseclib)

Question

When I use the Net_SSH2 library and the read/write functions like this:

$ssh = new Net_SSH2($strServerIPAddress);
if(!$ssh->login($strServerUsername, $strServerPassword))
die("error");
$ssh->write(" service httpd reload\n");
$strApacheRestartResult = $ssh->read("[root@$strServerName ~]#");
$ssh->disconnect();

I get funny characters in the read function results ($strApacheRestartResult) that I dont see when running the same thing via Putty, see below:

service httpd reload
Reloading httpd: [60G[[0;31mFAILED[0;39m]

[root@server1 ~]#

Why are these [60G[[0;31m and [0;39m] in the return data from the read function?

Answer 1

They're ANSI control codes. Their purpose is to control the formatting of the text and the color and what not. To decode them properly you'd need a terminal emulator. phpseclib has one called File_ANSI:

http://phpseclib.sourceforge.net/ssh/examples.html#top

Here's your code rewritten to use it:

$ssh = new Net_SSH2($strServerIPAddress);
$ansi = new File_ANSI();
if(!$ssh->login($strServerUsername, $strServerPassword))
die("error");
$ssh->write(" service httpd reload\n");
$ansi->appendString($ssh->read("[root@$strServerName ~]#"));
echo $ansi->getScreen();
$ssh->disconnect();