Paging Through Output with less
The less
command enables you to view large amounts of text in a more convenient way than the cat
command. For example, your /etc/passwd
file is probably more than a screen long, so if you run cat /etc/passwd
, you are not able to see what the lines at the top were. Using less /etc/passwd
enables you to use the cursor keys to scroll up and down the output freely. Type q
to quit and return to the shell.
On the surface, less
sounds like an easy command; however, it has the infamy of being one of the few Linux commands that have a parameter for every letter of the alphabet. That is, -a
does something, -b
does something else, -c
, -d
, -e ... -x
, -y
, -z
; they all do things, with some letters even differentiating between ...
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