2.6 KiB
Name
less - A full-featured terminal pager.
Synopsis
$ cat file | less [-PXem]
$ less [-PXem] [file]
$ cat file | more
$ more [file]
Description
less is a terminal pager that allows backwards movement. It is inspired by,
but largely incompatible with
GNU less.
Options
-P,--prompt: Set the prompt format string. See Prompts for more details.-X,--no-init: Don't switch to the xterm alternate buffer on startup.-e,--quit-at-eof: Immediately exit less when the last line of the document is reached.-m,--emulate-more: Apply-Xe, set the prompt to--More--, and disable scrollback. This option is automatically applied whenlessis executed asmore
Commands
Commands may be preceded by a decimal number N. Currently, this feature
does not exist, and no command use N.
| Command | Description |
|---|---|
q |
Exit less. |
j or DOWNARROW or ENTER |
Go to the next line. |
k or UPARROW |
Go to the previous line. |
f or SPACE |
Go to the next page. |
b |
Go to the previous page. |
Prompts
less accepts a special prompt string with the -P option. prompts accept a
variety of format specifiers so that they adapt to less's state.
A % followed by a letter will be replaced with the associated variable. If
such a variable does not exist, or currently has no value, it will be replaced
with a ?.
| Variable | Description |
|---|---|
%f |
Replaced with the name of the current file |
%l |
Replaced with the current line number |
A ? followed by a letter acts as an if expression on the associated
condition. : then acts as the else, and . acts as the end token. for example
if you wanted to print 'true' if you are at the end of the file and 'false'
otherwise, your prompt would be ?etrue:false.. These expressions are
arbitrarily nestable. If a condition does not exist, then it will always
evaluate it's false branch.
| Condition | Description |
|---|---|
?f |
True when reading from a file other than stdin. |
?e |
True when at the end of a file. |
A \\ followed by any character will be replaced with the literal value of the
character. For instance, \\%l would render as %l.
All other characters are treated normally.
Examples
less's current default prompt: '?f%f :.(line %l)?e (END):.'