The less tag has no wiki summary.
15
votes
1answer
378 views
Is there any way to exit “less” without clearing the screen?
Relatively often, I find myself wanting to quit less but leave what I was viewing on the screen, to refer back to. Is there any way to do this? Workarounds?
(My current workaround is to quit, then ...
3
votes
1answer
106 views
Using more command
Is there any case or reason to use "more" unix command instead of "less". As far as I see "less" is "better" in all senses, so does it mean that "more" is a command which has no reason to be used when ...
6
votes
4answers
141 views
pager program like less, able to repeat top N lines
Is there any way to make less program repeat first line (or first 2 lines) on every displayed page?
Is there any other pager program which can do this?
This would be a killer-app for database table ...
3
votes
2answers
134 views
Follow a pipe using less?
Can less follow (by pressing F) a piped input (similarly to a file)?
For a file that is being written to, the command
less <file>
will follow the file when pressing F.
But if I have a ...
14
votes
5answers
521 views
Is there a way to make tail -F beep?
Is there a way to make tail -F or less beep (ring the bell in a terminal) when new data comes in (a new line is added to the file).
Or is there any other unix utility to do this on a linux or mac.
15
votes
3answers
476 views
How can I use man without less?
By default, man uses less to output text. How can I tell it to just output to stdout? My terminal emulator has a scroll bar and search function and I want to use those instead of the arrow keys.
3
votes
2answers
147 views
Piping into less and editing: “cannot edit standard input” error. Workarounds?
I recently learned that if I page my files with less, I can press v and open the buffer in Emacs. This works as long as I have the environment variable $EDITOR set up correctly, which in my case I ...
3
votes
1answer
68 views
How can I force less to stop buffering its input line by line?
When reading from stdin, less does not display any output until a whole line has been read.
I use a script that prints progress on one line, without printing a newline, and I would really like to be ...
1
vote
1answer
35 views
How to make less show the previous lines when searching?
How can I make less show the previous couple of lines when I search for something? I'd like to get rid of the kkk steps in my usual process:
/keyword
kkk
(read)
n
kkk
(read)
17
votes
13answers
1k views
Is there ever a reason to use `cat` when you've got `less`?
I used to use cat to view files. Then I learned that less is usually better, and is a must if the file is longer than a few dozen rows.
My question: Is there ever a reason to use cat instead of less? ...
4
votes
2answers
569 views
Can less retain colored output?
Can I get less not to monochrome its output?
E.g., the output from git diff is colored, but git diff | less is not.
3
votes
2answers
137 views
Why do 'man' pages have many extra lines?
When I run the command:
man fork
There is a highlight line at the bottom that reads:
Manual page fork(2) line 52/99 (END)
But when I navigate to line 53 and up to 99, these are just blank ...
2
votes
1answer
129 views
What is the `less` command line option to page to the next file at the end of the current one?
I'm sure there used to be an option in less which allowed you to page onto the next file after you reached the end of the current file, so you could just keep *space*ing through a bunch of short files ...
2
votes
2answers
181 views
How to change default “reading” program?
right now when I run man smth or similar less is used to view it. However, on Mac OS X, I really like scrolling with touchpad instead on up/down or page-up/page-down buttons. Is there a way to just ...
1
vote
2answers
95 views
less -j is not working for me
less -jn where n is a line number to jump to is not working for me. It just has no effect. I'm running less version 436 on Ubuntu 11.04. I also tried less --jump-target=200 and LESS='-j200' less ...
8
votes
2answers
243 views
How can I view gzipped files in less without having to type zless?
I am using Ubuntu, and I would like to be able to type less compressed_text_file.gz and page the contents of the text file in uncompressed form. Is there a way to do this?
2
votes
2answers
248 views
'less' width issues
I'm connecting to my Linux boxes (primarily Debian Squeeze) using Putty for Windows. Whenever I run a 'less' command, e.g. on an aptitude search, less truncates the listing to much less than my ...
5
votes
1answer
141 views
Unhighlight Last Search in 'less'
When you use a / forward search or a ? backward search in less, all instances of the file get highlighted. After I've found the instance of the word I'm looking for, what is the most correct way to ...
3
votes
1answer
115 views
Force less to display a file as text
Sometimes less wrongly recognize file as binary and tries to show hexdump on LHS (usually ones with non-alphanumeric characters but still containing printable ASCII characters). How to force it to ...
8
votes
2answers
499 views
Can less invoke vim instead of the default vi when I hit the 'v' key?
I want to launch vim instead of the default vi editor when I hit v in less.
Are there any settings I can modify to allow me to do this?
3
votes
2answers
663 views
Colored man pages not working on gentoo
I have a problem using these methods to get colors in my man pages in gentoo. I've asked already in the gentoo forums but it still doesn't work, and the comments in a bug report (Bug 184604) don't ...
2
votes
3answers
302 views
Which systems have 'pager' shortcut/alias?
On a Debian system, one can type pager in order to use whatever pager program happens to be default/available. By default, less is used, and if not available, the lesser more gets to do the job. Is ...
13
votes
6answers
4k views
Is there a way to dynamically refresh the less command?
I like the watch command, but it has its limitations.
I'm curious to know whether I could mimic the functionality of watch with less. I'm mainly looking for the ability to scroll through my directory ...
1
vote
1answer
138 views
Use _roff to underline words
I currently have a file that I'd like to pass through a _roff to format with underline a few words in the file, and then view the file in less. Just a few, mind you, not whole sections or anything.
...
7
votes
7answers
764 views
Isn't less just more?
When I do more filename and less filename, it would seem that the resulting terminals are quite similar. I can navigate and search through my files identically (j, Space, /pattern, etc.).
I find it ...
9
votes
1answer
414 views
The 'less' command-line equivalent of 'tail -f'
I would like to open up a file using less, and have it automatically scroll the file similar to 'tail -f'.
I know that I can do less file, and then hit Shift-F to forward forever; like "tail -f".
I ...
7
votes
4answers
861 views
Colors in Man Pages
When I look at a man page in my 'console' (not an xterm) I see some coloration, but I don't get this in my xterm's (e.g. konsole) is there any way I can enable this? hopefully a fairly simple ...
18
votes
10answers
809 views
List of useful `less` functions
Rather than ask for your favorite, lets just list them off.
What are the more useful commands inside less?
Personally, I use:
/ (search forward)
? (search backwards)
F (enable tail -f like ...
