How to pipe help results to less by default?

Question

I use "--help" or "-h" a lot. By default it uses cat to open help file. How can i set it to use less by default. I want the result of "command --help |less" to be the same as "command --help"

No man is long and distracts – tyler durden Sep 10 '18 at 10:35 — tyler durden, Sep 10 '18 at 10:35

score 3 · Accepted Answer · answered Sep 10 '18 at 18:23

An alias for --help wouldn't work. Aliases only apply to command names, not to their arguments. I wouldn't recommend a completely invisible solution, anyways. Too much command-line magic can create bad habits.

You could create a help command instead.

h() { "$@" --help | less; }

$ h cat
Usage: cat [OPTION]... [FILE]...
<snip>

score 2 · Answer 2 · answered Sep 10 '18 at 10:02

2

Commands to not default to cat they just write to standard output.

Some comments (e.g., man) send the output to the application specified by the PAGER variable. You can set it to your favourite pager

export PAGER=less

But this will only work for applications that actually support it.

Otherwise you will have to pipe your commands as in your question.

answered Sep 10 '18 at 10:02

Matteo

14,696
9
68
106

no PAGER doesn't work, creating alias may be? "--help" to be "--help |less" – tyler durden Sep 10 '18 at 10:24
Pager does work for the applications that support it (not all). – Matteo Sep 10 '18 at 10:25
doesn't work as solution i meant, not as "you're wrong" – tyler durden Sep 10 '18 at 10:28

How to pipe help results to less by default?

2 Answers2