When an exception is generated by Symfony Console, the output is in a nice big red box.

throw new RuntimeException(
    sprintf(
        'Unable to locate the src directory within <fg=yellow;bg=red>%s</fg=yellow;bg=red>.'.PHP_EOL.
        'Try running with <fg=yellow;bg=red>--ignore-checkers</fg=yellow;bg=red>.',
        $input->getArgument('phpmaker-installation')
    )
);

But, unfortunately, if you put in style tags, they are rendered as literals.

If you override \Symfony\Component\Console\Output\OutputInterface::write() and unescape the tags, this will provide the output colouring, but not the correct lengths.

class MyOutput extends \Symfony\Component\Console\Output\Output
{
    /**
     * @inheritdoc
     *
     * Also removes the escaping of <fg> and <bg> tags.
     */
    public function write($messages, $newline = false, $options = self::OUTPUT_NORMAL)
    {
        parent::write(
            array_map(
                function ($message) {
                    return preg_replace('`\\\(?=</?[fb]g=)`', '', $message);
                },
                (array) $messages
            ),
            $newline,
            $options
        );
    }
}

The width of the block is determined by \Symfony\Component\Console\Application::stringWidth().

If this method was to remove the style tags before determining the length, then the length would/should be correct.

I'm aware that not all uses of '<xxxx>' will be style tags. Some may be literal and therefore escaping of the '<' (which is performed by \Symfony\Component\Console\Application::renderException() when it calls \Symfony\Component\Console\Formatter\OutputFormatter::escape()).

One idea on how to solve this would be to have an internal OutputFormatter that essentially removes known style tags. This formatter could wrap the string being passed to \Symfony\Component\Console\Application::stringWidth(), thus providing the correct string length.

The example code above doesn't take into account the other formats of the style tags (named styles).

Also, the \Symfony\Component\Console\Formatter\OutputFormatter::escape() method would need to ignore recognised style tags.

Happy to work on this, but any pointers, things I've missed, etc would be appreciated.