How can I get the raw formatting output of commands?

I'd like to know which control sequences are sent to bash by programs to format their outputs. For example, if I dump man less I can discern which parts are bold or underlined. DDEESSCCRRIIPPTTIIOONN _L_e_s_s is a program similar to _m_o_r_e (1), but which allows backward move- ment in the file as well as forward movement. But if I send ls -G's output to a file there's no data regarding its colors format. I'm using Mac OS X.