Fix Windows page/pipe encoding bug and bug in how signals are handled when running a piped shell application

CHANGELOG.md

@@ -1,3 +1,23 @@
+## 4.3.0 (TBD)
+
+- Bug Fixes
+    - On POSIX, piping a command's output to an interactive program such as `less`
+      (`help -v | less`) now runs that program as the terminal's foreground job, as a shell pipeline
+      does. It had run in a separate session that never received the terminal, so Ctrl-Z and `fg`
+      did not suspend and resume it together with cmd2. The program now owns the terminal as it
+      starts, so a pager can set its terminal modes, and Ctrl-C and Ctrl-Z reach the whole pipeline.
+      Pipes started from a worker thread, or whose output does not go to the terminal, such as one
+      nested in a command whose own output is piped, still run in their own session
+    - A `shell` command piped to an interactive program, such as `shell git log | less`, now joins
+      the pipeline's job, so both processes receive Ctrl-C and Ctrl-Z
+    - On Windows, fixed piped output appearing garbled in console programs such as `more`
+      (`help -v | more`), a regression in 4.2.4. Pipes are written as UTF-8, but console programs
+      decode their input with the console's code page. While a pipe or the pager runs, cmd2 now sets
+      the console to UTF-8 (code page 65001, as `chcp 65001` does) and restores its code pages
+      afterward, so console programs and UTF-8 tools such as `rg` both read the output correctly
+    - When copying a command's output to the clipboard (`help >`) fails, later commands' output is
+      no longer written to the temporary file that held it
+
 ## 4.2.4 (September 8, 2026)
 
 - Bug Fixes

CLAUDE.md

@@ -111,8 +111,8 @@ embedded Python/IPython shells and `run_pyscript` while keeping isolation.
 - Anything not documented under `docs/api/` is not public API (`cmd2/constants.py` says so
   explicitly).
 - Add user-visible changes to `CHANGELOG.md` under the current in-progress version heading.
-- `main` is the branch for the next PATCH release; MAJOR/MINOR work happens on a branch named for
-  the target version. Releases are tagged and published from `main`.
+- `main` is the branch for the next release, whether PATCH, MINOR, or MAJOR. Feature branches merge
+  into `main`, and all releases are tagged and published from it.
 - Do not commit spec, plan, or markdown documents without asking first. Save plans to
   `~/.superpowers/plans/` rather than the project directory.
 - This project uses a 127 character maximum line length for all Python code, including for comments.

docs/features/redirection.md

@@ -30,6 +30,10 @@ Piping the output of a `cmd2` command to a shell command works just like in POSI
 
 - pipe as input to a shell command with `|`, as in `mycommand args | wc`
 
+On POSIX systems, a pipe to an interactive program such as `less` runs as the terminal's foreground
+job, as it would in a shell: the program can read the keyboard, and Ctrl-C and Ctrl-Z reach it. A
+`shell` command whose output is piped this way, as in `shell git log | less`, joins the same job.
+
 ## Multiple Pipes and Redirection
 
 Multiple pipes, optionally followed by a redirect, are supported. Thus, it is possible to do

pyproject.toml

@@ -43,6 +43,7 @@ dev = [
     "mkdocstrings[python]>=1",
     "mypy>=2.3.1",
     "prek>=0.3.5",
+    "pyte>=0.8.2",
     "pytest>=8.1.1",
     "pytest-cov>=5",
     "pytest-mock>=3.14.1",
@@ -62,6 +63,7 @@ quality = ["prek>=0.3.5"]
 test = [
     "codecov>=2.1",
     "coverage>=7.11.3",
+    "pyte>=0.8.2",
     "pytest>=8.1.1",
     "pytest-cov>=5",
     "pytest-mock>=3.14.1",
@@ -91,6 +93,9 @@ exclude = [
     "^tests/",        # tests directory
 ]
 files = ['.']
+# Check as CI does, on Linux, so results don't depend on the developer's OS. Windows-only
+# branches are skipped, and POSIX-only job control would otherwise fail to check on Windows.
+platform = "linux"
 show_column_numbers = true
 show_error_codes = true
 show_error_context = true
@@ -104,6 +109,8 @@ warn_unused_ignores = true
 testpaths = ["tests"]
 addopts = [
     "-n=auto",
+    # Spread slow terminal cases across workers instead of queuing them in one batch.
+    "--maxschedchunk=1",
     "--cov=cmd2",
     "--cov-config=pyproject.toml",
     "--cov-report=xml",
@@ -112,6 +119,8 @@ addopts = [
 ]
 
 [tool.coverage.run]
+# Include the cmd2 applications launched by the terminal integration tests.
+patch = ["subprocess"]
 # Use sys.monitoring on Python 3.12+; coverage falls back with a warning on 3.11.
 core = "sysmon"
 source = ["cmd2"]