How can I save the current contents of less to a file?

Question

If I've piped the results of a command to less and then decided that I want to save the contents to a file, is this possible?

I've tried setting a mark a at the end of the buffer, and then returning to the top and using |avi to send the whole contents to vi, but that doesn't work.

Answer 1

On my system, man less says

       s filename
              Save the input to a file.  This only works if  the  input  is  a
              pipe, not an ordinary file.

Works for me!

Answer 2

Your mark a would be at the top of the last page in less. Use $ for end of file.

| <m> shell-command

<m> represents any mark letter. Pipes a section of the input file to the given shell command. The section of the file to be piped is between the first line on the current screen and the position marked by the letter. <m> may also be ^ or $ to indicate beginning or end of file respectively. If <m> is . or newline, the current screen is piped.

(see man less | less -p '^\s*\|')

Example:

g|$

(Go to top, pipe, to end of file.)

And at the ! (shell-command) prompt, enter:

vim -

Answer 3

Use the > operator. For example: less foo.bar > output.txt.

Answer 4

No if you have started less, but if you know before yu want to send it to less and a file then you can use the tee command

command | tee out_file | less