Since upgrading to Debian 12 (bookworm), the more command seems to have been changed and now comes to a stop when you reach the end of the file you are viewing and then displays "**(END)**", rather than just returning you to the command line (or prompting you to move on to the next file, if you are trying to view multiple files), as it did before. It seems that I now need to press q to actually quit more to return to the command line - but this would then prevent me from viewing the next file(s) I had named (in the case of multiple files), and so in that case I would then need to explicitly use the "Go to next file" keyboard not-so-shortcut. As someone with many years of muscle memory of `` being the universal Do The Right Thing shortcut, this change is really very annoying! Is there a way to make more revert to the previous more sensible behaviour, or is it maybe now sadly time for me to look into using a different file pager program instead?

I treat man pages is the primary source of documentation about installed software. I would like to use them not only as a reference, but actually read them from beginning to end. And here comes the question. When I close the man page, next time I want it to be opened at the place I left off. Is it possible? Ideally it would work with less, which is the default system pager. But I am OK to change it to any pager that will do the trick. Standalone vim for example remembers position the file was read at last time. There might be some way to use it as a pager remembering position. Please try your idea before posting comments/answer.

I have a utility that continuously outputs live logs from a program. But it can be quite hard to read the logs lines as they scroll past me in the terminal. Ideally it should scroll to one full page, and then pause until there is a full new screen of logs ready to be shown and then automatically scroll to that. Is it possible to pipe the output to some utility such as less or more to get pagination, but at the same time have it buffer the following output until a new page is ready and then automatically scroll without user input to the next page?

trying to install gentoo linux and can't format the drive with xfs because when I run mkfs.xfs /dev/sda3 it throws an error and then displays help, but the help is so big that it takes up the entire screen and I can't scroll up because Im on tty1. mkfs.xfs /dev/sda1 |more does nothing, it still shows the enlarged help and doesn't pause. I've tried redirecting the output to a file using

cat mkfs.xfs /dev/sda1 > file.txt 2>&1

but it just outputs garbage

On my FreeBSD 13.2 system, the zless utility cannot view text files compressed with gzip or compress, warning that they may be binary files and then showing garbage if I say I want to see the contents anyway. Strangely, using zmore or gunzip -c seems to work.

$ zless znapzend.log.1.gz
"znapzend.log.1.gz" may be a binary file.  See it anyway?

(Answering affirmatively sends binary data to the terminal.)

$ zless --version
less 608 (POSIX regular expressions)
Copyright (C) 1984-2022  Mark Nudelman

less comes with NO WARRANTY, to the extent permitted by law.
For information about the terms of redistribution,
see the file named README in the less distribution.
Home page: https://greenwoodsoftware.com/less 

$ zmore --version
less 608 (POSIX regular expressions)
Copyright (C) 1984-2022  Mark Nudelman

less comes with NO WARRANTY, to the extent permitted by law.
For information about the terms of redistribution,
see the file named README in the less distribution.
Home page: https://greenwoodsoftware.com/less 

What is the cause of this?

I messed up and rewrote /usr/bin/more with some gibberish. Is there a way to reinstall only more? Or in which package can I find the more command?

For 35 years I've been watching the more command work like this: when specifying multiple files, and without any options, it displays a header and the file contents as follows (most easily seen for short files):

$ more file*
::::::::::::::
file1
::::::::::::::
one
/* you press the space bar to advance from this point */
::::::::::::::
file2
::::::::::::::
two
/* you don't press it here because it's already reached EOF */
$

The above is with more from util-linux version 2.37.2 as on Ubuntu 22.04. With the new util-linux 2.38 as on Ubuntu 22.10, it prints a terminal "form feed" before every file header (apparently before each ::::::::::::::) and drives all previous output off the screen: for me, defeating the purpose of a text file browser. Also with more version 2.38 it is now apparently mandatory to advance to the next file by entering :n as one would in vi. This is somewhat natural for me as a vi user, but also disturbing because it used to be possible to use the space bar alone to advance continuously through all files. more --help as always shows some options to control pagination, but as far as I can tell (at least as compiled on Ubuntu) the form feeding has been introduced without any options to suppress it. Even if possible to pin back util-linux version 2.37.2, I don't see that's sustainable because it would also halt development of 100+ other Unix commands which have been part of the standard vocabulary for decades. The implications of changing how more has worked since the 1980's are too far-reaching that they must have been considered: i.e. some means of restoring the original behaviour.

When I search a file in less or more, it will remove lines and replace them with "skipping". Does anyone know what causes this and/or how to avoid it? After I '/' search a log file using either more or less, I see this: crw-rw-rw- 1 root staff 40, 0 Oct 27 2013 fscsi0 crw-rw-rw- 1 root staff 40, 1 Oct 27 2013 fscsi1 brw-rw---- 1 root system 10, 9 Oct 27 2013 hd1 ...skipping... crw-rw-rwT 1 root system 38, 7 Oct 27 2013 vhost7 crw-rw-rwT 1 root system 38, 8 Oct 27 2013 vhost8 crw-rw-rwT 1 root system 38, 9 Oct 27 2013 vhost9 crw------- 1 root system 12, 0 Oct 27 2013 vio0 crw------- 1 root system 20, 0 Apr 5 00:53 vty0 drwxr-xr-x 2 root system 256 Oct 15 2008 xti crw-rw-rw- 1 root system 2, 3 Oct 27 2013 zero ...skipping... crw-rw-rwT 1 root system 38, 7 Oct 27 2013 vhost7 crw-rw-rwT 1 root system 38, 8 Oct 27 2013 vhost8 crw-rw-rwT 1 root system 38, 9 Oct 27 2013 vhost9

I'd like to swap RETURN (scroll forward N lines, default one window) and SPACE (scroll forward N lines, default 1) in less to get a for me more natural way to page through man pages. I saw years ago a colleague having this setup during a telnet session to a router while he was skimming through a config file, so I don't actually know if this setting was on his SSH client, on the node or wherever. Anyway, I'd like to achieve this to the most extent possible, be it locally or remotely. I checked less man page's key bindings section and found a reference to lesskey . Unfortunately, Darwin doesn't have this program.

When using more or less, the output is paused at the end of each page. Is there some way to have it pause only for a few seconds (configurable or not), and then continue to the next page? Is there some other tool that can do it?

I'm now using Arch Linux, and find a command most works like more and less. To understand the differences between them is a confusing problem. The question https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/604/isnt-less-just-more mentions the differences between less and more. Do you know the differences on color performance, shortcuts and ability moving forward and backward?

In a script, I’m doing a git diff that I want to quickly page through. When I’m finished, the pager will exit and the script will continue. more is great for the task, because I can space through it and it will exit at the end of the file. Unfortunately, instead of the diff colours it shows the control characters. less shows the colours just fine, but when reaching the end of the file it does not exit, q is needed. How do I get both colour support and exiting on last space? No external tools can be added, only what comes with a default macOS installation.

How do I view all messages in the syslog? I am looking for messages that my program is generating that I have tagged with `[pistreaming] so I can find these messages usign grep` sudo more /var/log/syslog | grep -i pistreaming and I get output like this: Feb 23 19:31:49 opcrd logger: Starting pistreaming service... Feb 23 19:31:52 opcrd [pistreaming] Initializing websockets server on port 8084 Feb 23 19:31:52 opcrd [pistreaming] Initializing HTTP server on port 8082 Feb 23 19:43:21 opcrd logger: Starting pistreaming service... Feb 23 19:43:24 opcrd [pistreaming] Initializing websockets server on port 8084 Feb 23 19:43:24 opcrd [pistreaming] Initializing HTTP server on port 8082 Feb 23 19:43:24 opcrd [pistreaming] Initializing broadcast thread Feb 23 19:43:24 opcrd [pistreaming] Starting recording Feb 23 19:43:24 opcrd [pistreaming] Starting websockets thread Feb 23 19:43:24 opcrd [pistreaming] Starting HTTP server thread Feb 23 19:43:24 opcrd [pistreaming] Stopping recording Feb 23 19:43:25 opcrd [pistreaming] Waiting for broadcast thread to finish but, if I don't `grep`, these messages don't seem to show up in the log; what am I doing wrong?

I am on Mac OS. I have a C++ program that generates 1000+ lines of data that I redirect to a file. I then use less / more to go through the file. I'd like to have less pause at user-defined chunks of data instead of of pausing every screenful. I thought I could use the ^L character to mark page breaks, but even after adding them in my C++ code with

-c++
        printf("control-l \n");

the less command on my Mac will still pause at every screenful instead of at each control-L. I remember from decades ago that this worked on Unix. Do I need to do something different here?

I am confused by the output of the more program under linux. When creating a file which contains only a single letter (except for special letters like ä which work fine), more does not report the file's content, but that the file is not a text file. As soon as the file contains more than one letter, more does not report an error, but simply prints the file's output.

> rm file
> echo 'h' > file
> more file
 
******** file: Not a text file ********
 
> cat file
h

Is this a bug in my version of more or do specific requirements to text files exist, that are not fulfilled in my one-letter file example? more version: more from util-linux 2.36.2. ## Further details **Content of the file** The output of od is as follows:

> od -x file
0000000 0a68
0000002

From what I understand, the problem does not seem to be only caused by echo behaving differently from the way I expected, because when I use printf as it follows, the problem persists and the output of the od command is the same (so the files produced via echo and printf should be the same)

> printf 'h\n' > file2
> more file2
 
******** file2: Not a text file ********

> od -x file2
0000000 0a68
0000002

**Version of file utility**

> file --version
file-5.40
magic file from /usr/share/file/misc/magic
seccomp support included

**System information** My system is arch linux, and echo is the shell build-in command which I utilized via bash and zsh. **Bug report** Thanks to your feedback I was able to report this as a bug at the correct bug tracker: https://bugs.astron.com/view.php?id=256

I am running a file search command with ag -g foo and I'd like to see the contents of the files I find. If I do ag -g foo | xargs more then the more command makes me press the spacebar to advance between each file, even though they are small enough that I could see more than one at a time in my terminal window. If I do ag -g foo | xargs cat then I see everything at once, but the files are mushed together so it's hard to see where a new file starts. Is there a way to see the files all in one scroll, but with a heading for each one?

This question is for AIX 7 I have been working on a monitor which will display several pages of text. Initially the end user wanted a scrolling list for which I constructed this: IFS=''; cat plfeed | while read line; do echo $line; perl -e 'select(undef,undef,undef,.8)'; done The end user has decided that they would rather display a page (24 lines) of output for a set amount of time (20 seconds for example). I know that more will let me display a page at a time, but it requires keyboard input which is not acceptable for my use-case. tldr; How can I automate the 'more' command, or build a similar function that will sleep between pages and then automatically advance?

When I do more filename and less filename, it would seem that the resulting terminals are quite similar. I can navigate and search through my files identically (j, Space, /pattern, etc.). I find it hard to believe that less is more and vice versa. Are there any differences between the two?

I am using the below command on a file to extract few lines based on chr# ( different chromosome numbers). This is just a single file am working on. i have 8 such files and for each file I have to do this for chr(1to 22 and then chrX and chrY) , am not using any loop, I did it invidually , but if you see that I want the header to be intact for each of my output. If I execute individually I get the header in the output but if am running but if I run the script for all the 8 files together which is like 8*24 commands in a script one after another, the output does not have any header. Can you tell me why is this happening? #!/bin/sh # #$ -N DOC_gatk_chr #$ -cwd #$ -e err_DOC_gatk_chr.txt #$ -o out_DOC_gatk_chr.txt #$ -S /bin/sh #$ -M vivek.das@ieo.eu #$ -m bea #$ -l h_vmem=25G more S_313_IPS_S7995.coverage.sample_interval_summary | head -n1; more S_313_IPS_S7995.coverage.sample_interval_summary | grep "chr1" > S_313_IPS_S7995.chr1.coverage more S_313_IPS_S7995.coverage.sample_interval_summary | head -n1; more S_313_IPS_S7995.coverage.sample_interval_summary | grep "chr2" > S_313_IPS_S7995.chr2.coverage more S_313_IPS_S7995.coverage.sample_interval_summary | head -n1; more S_313_IPS_S7995.coverage.sample_interval_summary | grep "chr3" > S_313_IPS_S7995.chr3.coverage more S_313_IPS_S7995.coverage.sample_interval_summary | head -n1; more S_313_IPS_S7995.coverage.sample_interval_summary | grep "chr4" > S_313_IPS_S7995.chr4.coverage more S_313_IPS_S7995.coverage.sample_interval_summary | head -n1; more S_313_IPS_S7995.coverage.sample_interval_summary | grep "chr5" > S_313_IPS_S7995.chr5.coverage more S_313_IPS_S7995.coverage.sample_interval_summary | head -n1; more S_313_IPS_S7995.coverage.sample_interval_summary | grep "chr6" > S_313_IPS_S7995.chr6.coverage more S_313_IPS_S7995.coverage.sample_interval_summary | head -n1; more S_313_IPS_S7995.coverage.sample_interval_summary | grep "chr7" > S_313_IPS_S7995.chr7.coverage more S_313_IPS_S7995.coverage.sample_interval_summary | head -n1; more S_313_IPS_S7995.coverage.sample_interval_summary | grep "chr8" > S_313_IPS_S7995.chr8.coverage more S_313_IPS_S7995.coverage.sample_interval_summary | head -n1; more S_313_IPS_S7995.coverage.sample_interval_summary | grep "chr9" > S_313_IPS_S7995.chr9.coverage Am running it as a job with qsub so the structure of the script looks like above. It works if I execute the commands individually but if I run them like this , the header does not get printed in the output file, the ';' is not recognized it seems. I tried to ran it with both qsub filename.sh and sh filename.sh. I found that with sh filename.sh the header gets printed in the console. So definitely the command before';' semi-colon is not being written in the file. How can I get rid of this problem. Desired output: Target total_coverage average_coverage IPS_S7995_total_cvg IPS_S7995_mean_cvg IPS_S7995_granular_Q1 IPS_S7995_granular_median IPS_S7995_granular_Q3 IPS_S7995_%_above_15 chr2:41460-41683 14271 63.71 14271 63.71 56 67 79 100.0 chr2:45338-46352 123888 122.06 123888 122.06 79 123 147 94.6 chr2:218731-218983 11653 46.06 11653 46.06 36 50 55 100.0 chr2:224825-225012 12319 65.53 12319 65.53 57 68 76 100.0 chr2:229912-230090 20983 117.22 20983 117.22 93 120 147 100.0 chr2:230947-231137 22386 117.20 22386 117.20 100 120 139 100.0 chr2:233074-233258 11710 63.30 11710 63.30 54 66 73 100.0 chr2:234086-234300 22952 106.75 22952 106.75 91 113 126 100.0 chr2:242747-242922 20496 116.45 20496 116.45 93 124 142 100.0 chr2:243469-243671 27074 133.37 27074 133.37 126 138 148 100.0 But output am getting is below without the header chr2:41460-41683 14271 63.71 14271 63.71 56 67 79 100.0 chr2:45338-46352 123888 122.06 123888 122.06 79 123 147 94.6 chr2:218731-218983 11653 46.06 11653 46.06 36 50 55 100.0 chr2:224825-225012 12319 65.53 12319 65.53 57 68 76 100.0 chr2:229912-230090 20983 117.22 20983 117.22 93 120 147 100.0 chr2:230947-231137 22386 117.20 22386 117.20 100 120 139 100.0 chr2:233074-233258 11710 63.30 11710 63.30 54 66 73 100.0 chr2:234086-234300 22952 106.75 22952 106.75 91 113 126 100.0 chr2:242747-242922 20496 116.45 20496 116.45 93 124 142 100.0 chr2:243469-243671 27074 133.37 27074 133.37 126 138 148 100.0

It seems that more adds line breaks, whereas cat does not. As a result cat results will change to fit the terminal window if I resize the window, whereas more results stay put with the line breaks added the first time. My question is why, and is there any way to make more behave like cat? (I really don't like this setting of more, when I copy I end up getting the line breaks that I don't want.)