It's a UNIX command to display a file.
Example: less file will display the file file.
See discussion in Meta for the history on why less-unix is used for this instead of less, which is broadly used for CSS.
Questions tagged [less-unix]
139 questions
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1 answer
less '+&pattern' in cygwin
I am trying to use less (in cygwin) with an initial command of &pattern:
printf 'A\nB\n' | less '+&B'
Give me the text "&/B" at the topleft of my screen, and I have to press
ENTER to do the actual filtering.
I was expecting it to do the filtering…
Morten Kjærulff
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1
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2 answers
Terminal width IOCTL when piped to less
I have this program which uses
ioctl(file_descriptor_of_stdout, TIOCGWINSZ, &w);
to get the terminal width (used in printing arrays). This works fine if I run my program directly on a terminal; however, I often pipe output through less, for paging…
einpoklum
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1 answer
Boolean operators while searching in Less?
I'm reading file using Less. I need to search for some text, but I would like to exclude some other text.
Is it possible to build expressions like
/someText OR another text
or its not supported ?
jmt
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1
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1 answer
scrolling shortcuts in Cygwin terminal less output
What keyboard shortcuts can I use to scroll up and down in an output that has been piped to less in the Cygwin terminal application?
I like being able to scroll in less using 'Shift'+'PgUp/PgDn', but when working with a large piped output today, I…
Rick McDonnell
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2 answers
Ant exec command argument dealing with multiple files
I am using ant exec command to implement the less utility to view the source code of a bunch of .java files. (I know that there are other ways to do this like using concat)
So the call ant view works if I specify only one file:
…
PTN
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1
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2 answers
Why is it that we can redirect the input of 'less' command, but we can't run less without any arguments?
as far as i learned in programming, when i want to add the input redirection to my program, i write my program as when it executed, it waits for the user's input (with std::cin or something similar). but i got confused by less command.
We all know…
Shnd
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1 answer
How to exit automatically at end of file on vim?
I tried vim/less.sh as pager with syntax highlighting, but there is a little issue:
when displaying small file, vim uses 'full screen' and waits for a command from user.
Can I let vim to act like a less --quit-at-eof?
In other words, is there a way…
Victor Istomin
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1
vote
1 answer
Python Fabric: executing interactive program such as less on remote?
When I execute something like:
run('less ')
Within fabric, it prepends the lines with Out: and interacting with it doesn't work as expected.
If I run it with:
run('cat ', pty=False)
The output isn't prepended with anything and…
stgtscc
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2 answers
How can I display out-of-range ascii characters?
I'm connected to a Linux machine using PuTTY.
On the Linux machine, I'm running a python script that takes a list of characters and prints each character, together with its index, in order.
Some of the characters in my list fall outside the range of…
BitPusher16
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1
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1 answer
use zsh's built in pager instead of less
Suppose I've got a giant command
echo "start string `complexcommand -with -many args | cut -d ' ' -moreargs | sed 's/you/get/g' | grep -v "the idea" | xargs echo` ending string" | program | less -S
It produces output of several hundred lines of…
Steven Lu
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1
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3 answers
PHP run linux "less" command via exec - binary file warning
I have to convert some PDF files to TXT. I end up with "less" command, because for example pdftotext has some problems with tables in PDF. The problem is that when I ran the command from exec function (or shell_exec/system), less just showing me…
David Kudera
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3 answers
Search in Man page for words at the beginning of line
For me, it happens a lot when I want to search for an specific option in man page. I know that options are at the beginning of lines, but don't know how to limit the search.
I've tried /^REG-PATT, but it didn't work for me.
What is the shortest…
Rsh
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1 answer
R unix terminal pager
I'm using R on OS X 10.6 and I prefer the unix console to the R.app for my work. If I issue a help command eg ?print the help content opens through a pager (i tried most and less), which however then hides out the content if I exit it bringing me…
nikola
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1
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2 answers
Word Unexpected (expecting ")") with Makefile
I'm making a makefile and I'm working on a target with no dependencies that checks to see if a file named README exists in the current directory and if it does, read it using less or else exit quitely: give no errors whatsoever--the command to run…
Wuzseen
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1 answer
Bash piping issue
I need to execute the following grep query as an argument for konsole (the kde terminal)
grep -R -i -n -A 2 -B 2 --color=always -R "searchtext" * | less -R
works for the current terminal.
konsole --workdir `pwd` -e grep -R -i -n -A 2 -B 2…
Joel G Mathew
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