Strip HTML from messages sent to the command line

I'm seeing the same output:

d7dev $ drush urol "administrator" --uid=2
Added the <em class="placeholder">administrator</em> role to uid <em class="placeholder">2</em>  

The dt() function seems to generate this, as wrapping it in strip_tags() fixes it. Are there some commands that output HTML, which is why this is in place?

This is because %substitutions wrap the substituted text with html tags. This is only done if there is a bootstrapped Drupal site. For example:

$ drush ev 'print(dt("Add %test", array("%test" => "html")));'
add html
$ drush @site ev 'print(dt("Add %test", array("%test" => "html")));'
Add <em>html</em>
$ drush @site ev 'print(dt("Add !test", array("!test" => "plain")));'
Add plain

The correct solution here is to find all occurrences of the dt() function that use % substitutions, and switch them to use !substitutions.

Did proceed per #2.

Instead of strip_tags I'd like to see we #1162694: Switch from t() to gettext().