ANSI codes are commands embedded in a text stream to add formatting instructions into this text. These codes are interpreted by terminal emulators like xterm or Putty.

Ansifilter parses common ANSI codes to remove them or to convert them to another colored text file format (HTML, TeX, LaTeX, RTF, Pango or BBCode). Support for ANSI art files (based on codepage 437 and ANSI.SYS sequences or BIN/XBIN/TND files) is enabled with the --art-cp437, --art-bin and --art-tundra options.