5

At times, my software (generally while testing) outputs very long lines, so I use the -S command line option which means I see one line instead of possibly many screens of data.

Once in a while, I like to verify that data which means I scroll right through the very long (wide) line.

Once I'm done, I'd like to be able to come back to column 1 with a key. I tried 0 and 1 and ^ (i.e. like in vim) but it doesn't look like that works. I'm thinking that there may not be a way even though you'd think that's an important feature...

| improve this question | |
  • The left arrow key? – muru Oct 1 '19 at 1:01
  • If you are 10 or even 20 screens to the right, that's a lot of left arrows... – Alexis Wilke Oct 1 '19 at 1:33
5

Press h to show the help, which says:

ESC-)  RightArrow *  Right one half screen width (or N positions).
ESC-(  LeftArrow  *  Left  one half screen width (or N positions).
ESC-}  ^RightArrow   Right to last column displayed.
ESC-{  ^LeftArrow    Left  to first column.

Or press and hold the left arrow key.

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  • 1
    I guess I have a version that's too old (Ubuntu 16.04, Less 481)... because the ESC-{ and I suppose the ^LeftArray means Ctrl-LeftArray, correct? Neither works on my machine. However, the ESC-( works. Press and hold works okay for a few screens, when you have many, it's not that great. Oh well... I'll have to switch to my new computer soon and see whether it works on that one. – Alexis Wilke Oct 1 '19 at 2:18
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    @AlexisWilke you could try something like 10000 Esc ( (type 10000 or some arbitrarily large number before Esc-(). – muru Oct 1 '19 at 2:26
  • 1
    Ah! Now that works. Cool! Thank you. – Alexis Wilke Oct 1 '19 at 2:29

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