Ubuntu still has distinct less/more bins. At least mine does, or the more
command is sending different arguments to less.
In any case, to see the difference, find a file that has more rows than you can see at one time in your terminal. Type cat
, then the file name. It will just dump the whole file. Type more
, then the file name. If on ubuntu, or at least my version (9.10), you'll see the first screen, then --More--(27%)
, which means there's more to the file, and you've seen 27% so far. Press space to see the next page. less
allows moving line by line, back and forth, plus searching and a whole bunch of other stuff.
Basically, use less
. You'll probably never need more
for anything. I've used less
on huge files and it seems OK. I don't think it does crazy things like load the whole thing into memory (cough Notepad). Showing line numbers could take a while, though, with huge files.
less
is more thanmore
, more or less,more
is less thanless
. ;-)less
andmore
are the same executable, while on others they are different.