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I know some years ago everyone was raving about the "most" pager. However, it doesn't seem to be developed any further and I'm wary of switching to a stale package.

I'd appreciate your opinion on the matter. Should I stick to "less"?

Thanks.

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closed as not constructive by Xavierjazz, Indrek, grawity, Daniel Beck♦ Sep 23 '12 at 16:37

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2 Answers

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Try them and see which one you personally like best. There shouldn't be a big learning curve to a more utility and not everyone's tastes are the same.

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We don't like "stale", we call it "stable" :).

Joking aside, these are such basic programs that whether or not one is actively developed should not make much difference. You can easily play with both (both should be installed by default on most distros) and decide for yourself.

The main advantage of less from user perspective is that you can browse the displayed text using both the arrow buttons and the mouse wheel.

I believe more may be better at displaying colors and, perhaps, other strange characters(see update below). For example, I have written a little PERL script called color that highlights a given string using PERL's Term::ANSIColor module. The screenshot below shows its output piped through less and more:

  • Script output alone and piped through more: Script output alone and piped through more

  • Script output piped through less (echo "hello world" | color -l o | less): Script output piped through less

  • Script output piped through less -R (echo "hello world" | color -l o | less -R): enter image description here

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less strips escape sequences as a safety feature, unless you use less -R. – grawity Sep 23 '12 at 16:20
@grawity, thank you! Now I feel like an idiot, I've been using more instead of less for that reason for years. Never thought to RTFM :) – terdon Sep 23 '12 at 16:22

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