Erlang formatter not working as expected

[lukebakken]

Reported in this rabbitmq-users discussion.

To reproduce:

• Start up RabbitMQ 3.8.0
• Run rabbitmqctl cluster_status --formatter erlang. Instead of the "old style" erlang term output, you get the "new" output stuffed into a binary:

Cluster status of node rabbit@shostakovich ...                                                                                                                                                                                                                                  
<<"\e[1mBasics\e[0m\n\nCluster name: rabbit@shostakovich\n\n\e[1mDisk Nodes\e[0m\n\nrabbit@shostakovich\n\n\e[1mRunning Nodes\e[0m\n\nrabbit@shostakovich\n\n\e[1mVersions\e[0m\n\nrabbit@shostakovich: RabbitMQ 3.8.0 on Erlang 22.1.2\n\n\e[1mAlarms\e[0m\n\n(none)\n\n\e[1mNetwork Partitions\e[0m\n\n(none)\n\n\e[1mListeners\e[0m\n\nNode: rabbit@shostakovich, interface: [::], port: 25672, protocol: clustering, purpose: inter-node and CLI tool communication\nNode: rabbit@shostakovich, interface: [::], port: 5672, protocol: amqp, purpose: AMQP 0-9-1 and AMQP 1.0\nNode: rabbit@shostakovich, interface: [::], port: 15672, protocol: http, purpose: HTTP API\n\n\e[1mFeature flags\e[0m\n\nFlag: drop_unroutable_metric, state: enabled\nFlag: empty_basic_get_metric, state: enabled\nFlag: implicit_default_bindings, state: enabled\nFlag: quorum_queue, state: enabled\nFlag: virtual_host_metadata, state: enabled">>

Expected result: see the old cluster status like this:

[{nodes,[{disc,[rabbitmq@rabbitmq1,rabbitmq@rabbitmq2]}]},
 {running_nodes,[rabbitmq@rabbitmq2,rabbitmq@rabbitmq1]},
 {cluster_name,<<"rabbitmq@bfbdb8a2097d">>},
 {partitions,[]},
 {alarms,[{rabbitmq@rabbitmq2,[]},{rabbitmq@rabbitmq1,[]}]}]

[169232651]

[aldobongio]

Please update also the code responsible for the usage output. There is no mention of "erlang" there.