less(1) - SerenityOS man pages

#Name

less - A full-featured terminal pager.

#Synopsis

$ cat file | less [-PXNem]
$ less [-PXNem] [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.
-N, --line-numbers: Show line numbers before printed lines.
-e, --quit-at-eof: Immediately exit less when the last line of the document is reached.
-F, --quit-if-one-screen: Exit immediately if the entire file can be displayed on one screen.
-m, --emulate-more: Apply -Xe, set the prompt to --More--, and disable scrollback. This option is automatically applied when less is executed as more

#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):.'

#See Also

more(1) For a simpler pager that less implements.
man(1) For serenity's manual pager, that uses less.