When reading a file with `less` or `more`, how can I get the content in colors?

Question

When I read a file in Linux with the command less or more, how can I get the content in colors?

This seems related: superuser.com/questions/36022/less-and-grep-color - does it help? — Jonik, Mar 9 '10 at 13:40
The title of this question is very misleading. Many people landing on this page expect a solution to the coloring issue you will get when piping a command with colored output to less: colors are lost. (The answers to that ”piping issue“ involve less -R, unbuffer etc.) But the actual question refers to opening a file! — The ambiguity lies primarily in the question's title, but even besides that, IMHO the question is still too broad: ”read a file“ could refer to any file (probably plain text). (well, ”get the content in colors“ is probably referring to syntax highlighting.) — myrdd, Dec 3 '18 at 23:05
I need to correct myself, only 3 (or 4) of 14 answers are missing the OP's actual question: the answers by ChristopheD, Puneet and Onlyjob; and maybe jbbr. Still, two of those answers are part of the three highest-voted ones. — myrdd, Dec 3 '18 at 23:38
@myrdd "syntax highlighting" is the relevant term then... (It asks about showing colors, not adding colors?) less -R will work on files as well, e.g. ls --color=always > /tmp/file && less -R /tmp/file — Gert van den Berg, Jul 5 at 10:20
@myrdd It might make most sense for the question to be closed as "unclear what is being asked" since questions asking any of the two would likely get marked as duplicates of this... (And answers for any of the two can get downvoted based on how the voter interprets it...) (My use case was a log file that (annoyingly) has color escape codes in it) — Gert van den Berg, Jul 7 at 12:36

Dario Seidl · Accepted Answer · 2018-11-11 15:42:38Z

149

You can utilize the power of pygmentize with less - automatically! (No need to pipe by hand.)

Install pygments with your package manager or pip (possibly called python-pygments) or get it here http://pygments.org/download/.

Write a file ~/.lessfilter

#!/bin/sh
case "$1" in
    *.awk|*.groff|*.java|*.js|*.m4|*.php|*.pl|*.pm|*.pod|*.sh|\
    *.ad[asb]|*.asm|*.inc|*.[ch]|*.[ch]pp|*.[ch]xx|*.cc|*.hh|\
    *.lsp|*.l|*.pas|*.p|*.xml|*.xps|*.xsl|*.axp|*.ppd|*.pov|\
    *.diff|*.patch|*.py|*.rb|*.sql|*.ebuild|*.eclass)
        pygmentize -f 256 "$1";;

    .bashrc|.bash_aliases|.bash_environment)
        pygmentize -f 256 -l sh "$1";;

    *)
        if grep -q "#\!/bin/bash" "$1" 2> /dev/null; then
            pygmentize -f 256 -l sh "$1"
        else
            exit 1
        fi
esac

exit 0

In your .bashrc add

export LESS='-R'
export LESSOPEN='|~/.lessfilter %s'

Also, you need to make ~/.lessfilter executable by running

chmod u+x ~/.lessfilter

Tested on Debian.

You get the idea. This can of course be improved further, accepting more extensions or parsing the shebang for other interpreters than bash. See some of the other answers for that.

The idea came from an old blog post from the makers of Pygments, but the original post doesn't exist anymore.

edited Nov 11 '18 at 15:42

answered Sep 20 '11 at 3:29

Dario Seidl

2,3041 gold badge14 silver badges21 bronze badges

6

If you want to have coloring of the source code files, you also need to make ~/.lessfilter executable by running chmod u+x ~/.lessfilter. You also need to have pygmentize (pygments.org/download) installed. – Sergiy Belozorov Dec 18 '12 at 11:07
Can anyone confirm that this works as it has no effect for me when I execute a command like ls -l | less – puk Oct 30 '13 at 13:59
7

@puk you can do something like ls --color=always -l | less -R. Obviously a lot to type but you could alias it to something like ll. That is if you don't want to use any extra libraries. – PhilT Jul 23 '14 at 16:17
2

added @SergiyByelozyorov's comment into the answer. – andrybak Jan 18 '15 at 12:54
2

My edit was rejected so I guess I'll post it as a comment instead: Don't test the exit codes of commands indirectly. You can use if grep -q "#\!/bin/bash" "$1" (the -q suppresses standard output). You may want to redirect standard error with 2>/dev/null. – Tom Fenech Oct 23 '15 at 13:16

| show 8 more comments

Kamil Maciorowski · Accepted Answer · 2017-07-26 08:38:01Z

503

Try the following:

less -R

from man less:

-r or --raw-control-chars

Causes "raw" control characters to be displayed. (...)

-R or --RAW-CONTROL-CHARS

Like -r, but only ANSI "color" escape sequences are output in "raw" form. (...)

edited Jul 26 '17 at 8:38

Kamil Maciorowski

34.6k18 gold badges64 silver badges101 bronze badges

answered Mar 9 '10 at 10:48

ChristopheD

5,4442 gold badges11 silver badges10 bronze badges

17

This is useful when the file itself contains the escape codes that will need to be displayed. – Nitrodist Dec 16 '11 at 21:16
1

I used to know about less -r but searching in the file using "/" kept bringing up the wrong lines. -R seems to do a better job. Thanks for the tip. – Amos Shapira Aug 6 '13 at 0:28
54

It should be noted that most programs use the isatty(2) syscall to check whether their standard output is a terminal, and usually disable colorized output if it is not. For any pipe to less, isatty will return 0. To check whether this works, try echo -e '\x1b[32;1mtest\x1b[m' | less -r – mic_e Sep 24 '13 at 22:53
11

This answer does not excel in the actually does something test. – Michael Wolf May 9 '14 at 22:24
18

You can also type -R when you already opened less to achieve this. – Scz Sep 1 '16 at 7:56

| show 7 more comments

Community · Accepted Answer · 2017-03-20 10:17:45Z

138

I got the answer in another post: Less and Grep: Getting colored results when using a pipe from grep to less

When you simply run grep --color it implies grep --color=auto which detects whether the output is a terminal and if so enables colors. However, when it detects a pipe it disables coloring. The following command:
grep --color=always "search string" * | less -R
Will always enable coloring and override the automatic detection, and you will get the color highlighting in less.

Warning: Don't put --color=always as an alias, it break things sometimes. That's why there is an --color=auto option.

edited Mar 20 '17 at 10:17

Community♦

1

answered Apr 27 '11 at 4:19

Puneet

1,3811 gold badge8 silver badges2 bronze badges

6

Nice, thanks. Except that I need to use -R as an option to less, as well. – naught101 May 8 '12 at 6:41
10

I believe grep -R is for specifying recursive search. less -R is necessary for less to correctly spit the colors back out. grep --color=always [grep cmds] | less -R works for me on OS X 10.7.3! – Steven Lu May 9 '12 at 13:56
@naught101 @Steven Lu Edited in, though it seems that some people may not need to use less -R (according to the author of the original post, anyway). – jtpereyda Oct 22 '13 at 17:17
2

Is there anyway to let grep know just pipe less -R command and then just do coloring? So, we don't have to put --color=always and less -R all the time. – A-letubby Feb 27 '15 at 7:50
1

This is by far the simplest working answer. Thanks! – Danny Staple Oct 3 '15 at 11:16

| show 1 more comment

Jawa · Accepted Answer · 2013-09-24 10:24:03Z

37

Use view instead of less. It opens the file with vim in readonly mode.

It's practically a coloured less: a pager where you can search with / (and more). The only drawback is that you can't exit with q but you need :q

Also, you get the same colouring as vim (since you're in fact using vim).

edited Sep 24 '13 at 10:24

Jawa

3,2298 gold badges25 silver badges35 bronze badges

answered Sep 24 '13 at 9:50

Riccardo Galli

4855 silver badges6 bronze badges

How about the performance of big files? Vim syntax highlighting is know to be slow on huge files. – pihentagy Feb 20 '14 at 10:28
I don't know what's your value for 'big', but opening a ~10000 lines file is instantaneous, search inside included. – Riccardo Galli Feb 20 '14 at 11:50
1

I upvoted (I didn't know about view) but another downside is that j/k/up/down don't instantly scroll, since there is a cursor. – Tyler Collier Mar 1 '15 at 17:38
7

Note that you may need to add view - when piping – user45909 Mar 2 '15 at 0:54
6

vim is an editor, which loads the complete file into memory, whereas less is a pager, loading the file only partially into memory. You will know the difference with huge files. – sjas Jul 20 '16 at 12:13

| show 4 more comments

jbbr · Accepted Answer · 2019-04-20 17:10:24Z

16

To tell less to show colors call it with -R:

less -R

Unfortunately some programs detect that their stdout is not a terminal and disable colors - e.g pacman (Arch Linux package manager).

In those cases its possible to use unbuffer:

unbuffer <command> | less -R

Example using pacman

unbuffer pacman -Ss firefox | less -R

The unbuffer command is usually part of the package expect (Arch Linux, Debian/Ubuntu) or expect-dev (legacy versions of Debian/Ubuntu).

To answer the question for completeness:

As others already answered, pygmentize is great for colorizing source code. It does not require unbuffer. Easiest call:

pygmentize someSource.cpp | less -R

edited Apr 20 at 17:10

answered Oct 8 '16 at 10:37

jbbr

1611 silver badge3 bronze badges

2

To use unbuffer on Ubuntu, sudo apt install expect – wisbucky Dec 4 '18 at 18:37
This answer needs more upvotes. – Thomas Dignan Apr 19 at 14:26
I was trying to pipe dmesg output to check on boot errors but the colours didn't work unless I use unbuffer, which was confusing the heck out of me: unbuffer dmesg | less -R works as expected. – pbhj May 12 at 9:49

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Tuxdude · Accepted Answer · 2013-03-12 07:17:20Z

15

pygmentize supports the -g option to automatically guess the lexer to be used which is useful for files read from STDIN without checking any extension type.

Using that, you only need to set the following 2 exports in your .bashrc without any additional scripts:

export LESS='-R'
export LESSOPEN='|pygmentize -g %s'

answered Mar 12 '13 at 7:17

Tuxdude

5995 silver badges12 bronze badges

4

Concise and effective. I prefer defining an alias, because sometimes less is better. So: alias lesc='LESS="-R" LESSOPEN="|pygmentize -g %s" less' – Tiago Apr 28 '14 at 18:27

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Benjamin Bannier · Accepted Answer · 2010-03-09 13:30:02Z

You didn't say what this color should mean, e.g. what should the colors be for a text file?

If what you want is syntax highlighting for source code, you need a source code highlighter. I sometimes use pygmentize like this

pygmentize file.cpp | less

or

pygmentize file.cpp | more

There are other highlighters around.

This is pretty fast. If you don't mind firing up vim there is a read-only mode that can give you syntax highlighting if you have it in vim.

view file.cpp

or alternatively see churnd's answer.

Joe Coder · Accepted Answer · 2018-01-02 12:43:45Z

This is yet another pygments-based answer, with several major improvements:

does not break lesspipe or lessfile filters
works with multiple inputs to less
correctly parses the script type from the shebang header
works for all 434 file types lexable by Pygments
color scheme is parameterized as an environment variable

Install Pygments and Gawk

sudo apt-get install python-pygments python3-pygments gawk

Set Environment Variables

Check whether lesspipe or lessfile is already enabled:

echo $LESSOPEN

If you don't see either program referenced there, ensure that lesspipe is installed (most distros come with it).

Add the following to ~/.bashrc:

# sets LESSOPEN and LESSCLOSE variables
eval "$(SHELL=/bin/sh lesspipe)"

# interpret color characters
export LESS='-R'

# to list available styles: `pygmentize -L styles`
export PYGMENTIZE_STYLE='paraiso-dark'

# optional
alias ls='ls --color=always'
alias grep='grep --color=always'

If you don't want lesspipe, replace the eval statement with:

export LESSOPEN='|~/.lessfilter %s'

Create `~/.lessfilter`

Add the following code and make the file executable: chmod u+x ~/.lessfilter

#!/bin/bash
for path in "$@"; do
    # match by known filenames
    filename=$(basename "$path")
    case "$filename" in
        .bashrc|bash.bashrc|.bash_aliases|.bash_environment|.bash_profile|\
        .bash_login|.bash_logout|.profile|.zshrc|.zprofile|.zshrc|.zlogin|\
        .zlogout|zshrc|zprofile|zshrc|zlogin|zlogout|.cshrc|.cshdirs|\
        csh.cshrc|csh.login|csh.logout|.tcshrc|.kshrc|ksh.kshrc)
            # shell lexer
            pygmentize -f 256 -O style=$PYGMENTIZE_STYLE -l sh "$path"
            ;;
        .htaccess|apache.conf|apache2.conf|Dockerfile|Kconfig|external.in*|\
        standard-modules.in|nginx.conf|pacman.conf|squid.conf|termcap|\
        termcap.src|terminfo|terminfo.src|control|sources.list|CMakeLists.txt|\
        Makefile|makefile|Makefile.*|GNUmakefile|SConstruct|SConscript|\
        .Rhistory|.Rprofile|.Renviron|Rakefile|Gemfile|PKGBUILD|autohandler|\
        dhandler|autodelegate|.vimrc|.exrc|.gvimrc|vimrc|exrc|gvimrc|todo.txt)
            # filename recognized
            pygmentize -f 256 -O style=$PYGMENTIZE_STYLE "$path"
            ;;
        *)
            ext=$([[ "$filename" = *.* ]] && echo ".${filename##*.}" || echo '')
            case "$ext" in
                .as|.mxml|.bc|.g|.gd|.gi|.gap|.nb|.cdf|.nbp|.ma|.mu|.at|.run|\
                .apl|.adl|.adls|.adlf|.adlx|.cadl|.odin|.c-objdump|.s|\
                .cpp-objdump|.c++-objdump|.cxx-objdump|.d-objdump|.S|.hsail|\
                .ll|.asm|.ASM|.objdump-intel|.objdump|.tasm|.au3|.ahk|.ahkl|\
                .bb|.decls|.bmx|.bas|.monkey|.BAS|.bst|.bib|.abap|.ABAP|.cbl|\
                .CBL|.cob|.COB|.cpy|.CPY|.gdc|.maql|.p|.cls|.c|.h|.idc|.cpp|\
                .hpp|.c++|.h++|.cc|.hh|.cxx|.hxx|.C|.H|.cp|.CPP|.ino|.clay|\
                .cu|.cuh|.ec|.eh|.mq4|.mq5|.mqh|.nc|.pike|.pmod|.swg|.i|.vala|\
                .vapi|.capnp|.chpl|.icl|.dcl|.cf|.docker|.ini|.cfg|.inf|\
                .pc|.properties|.reg|.tf|.pypylog|.cr|.csd|.orc|.sco|.css|\
                .less|.sass|.scss|.croc|.d|.di|.smali|.jsonld|.json|.yaml|\
                .yml|.dpatch|.darcspatch|.diff|.patch|.wdiff|.boo|.aspx|.asax|\
                .ascx|.ashx|.asmx|.axd|.cs|.fs|.fsi|.n|.vb|.als|.bro|.crmsh|\
                .pcmk|.msc|.pan|.proto|.pp|.rsl|.sbl|.thrift|.rpf|\
                .dylan-console|.dylan|.dyl|.intr|.lid|.hdp|.ecl|.e|.elm|.ex|\
                .exs|.erl|.hrl|.es|.escript|.erl-sh|.aheui|.befunge|.bf|.b|\
                .camkes|.idl4|.cdl|.cw|.factor|.fan|.flx|.flxh|.frt|.f|.F|\
                .f03|.f90|.F03|.F90|.PRG|.prg|.go|.abnf|.bnf|.jsgf|.cyp|\
                .cypher|.asy|.vert|.frag|.geo|.plot|.plt|.ps|.eps|.pov|.inc|\
                .agda|.cry|.hs|.idr|.kk|.kki|.lagda|.lcry|.lhs|.lidr|.hx|\
                .hxsl|.hxml|.sv|.svh|.v|.vhdl|.vhd|.dtd|.haml|.html|.htm|\
                .xhtml|.xslt|.pug|.jade|.scaml|.xml|.xsl|.rss|.xsd|.wsdl|\
                .wsf|.xpl|.pro|.ipf|.nsi|.nsh|.spec|.i6t|.ni|.i7x|.t|.io|\
                .ijs|.coffee|.dart|.eg|.js|.jsm|.juttle|.kal|.lasso|\
                .lasso[89]|.ls|.mask|.j|.ts|.tsx|.jl|.aj|.ceylon|.clj|\
                .cljs|.golo|.gs|.gsx|.gsp|.vark|.gst|.groovy|.gradle|.ik|\
                .java|.kt|.pig|.scala|.xtend|.cpsa|.cl|.lisp|.el|.hy|.lsp|.nl|\
                .kif|.rkt|.rktd|.rktl|.scm|.ss|.shen|.xtm|.cmake|.mak|.mk|\
                .[1234567]|.man|.md|.css.in|.js.in|.xul.in|.rst|.rest|.tex|\
                .aux|.toc|.m|.sci|.sce|.tst|.ml|.mli|.mll|.mly|.opa|.sml|.sig|\
                .fun|.bug|.jag|.mo|.stan|.def|.mod|.mt|.ncl|.nim|.nimrod|.nit|\
                .nix|.cps|.x|.xi|.xm|.xmi|.mm|.swift|.ooc|.psi|.psl|.G|.ebnf|\
                .rl|.treetop|.tt|.adb|.ads|.ada|.pas|.dpr|.pwn|.sp|.pl|.pm|\
                .nqp|.p6|.6pl|.p6l|.pl6|.6pm|.p6m|.pm6|.php|.php[345]|.zep|\
                .praat|.proc|.psc|.lgt|.logtalk|.prolog|.pyx|.pxd|.pxi|.dg|\
                .py3tb|.py|.pyw|.sc|.tac|.sage|.pytb|.qvto|.Rout|.Rd|.R|.rq|\
                .sparql|.ttl|.r|.r3|.reb|.red|.reds|.txt|.rnc|.graph|\
                .instances|.robot|.fy|.fancypack|.rb|.rbw|.rake|.gemspec|\
                .rbx|.duby|.rs|.rs.in|.SAS|.sas|.applescript|.chai|.ezt|\
                .mac|.hyb|.jcl|.lsl|.lua|.wlua|.moo|.moon|.rexx|.rex|.rx|\
                .arexx|.sh|.ksh|.bash|.ebuild|.eclass|.exheres-0|.exlib|.zsh|\
                .sh-session|.shell-session|.bat|.cmd|.fish|.load|.ps1|.psm1|\
                .tcsh|.csh|.ns2|.st|.smv|.snobol|.rql|.sql|.sqlite3-console|\
                .do|.ado|.scd|.tcl|.rvt|.ng2|.tmpl|.spt|.cfc|.cfm|.cfml|\
                .evoque|.kid|.handlebars|.hbs|.phtml|.jsp|.liquid|.mao|.mhtml|\
                .mc|.mi|.myt|.rhtml|.tpl|.ssp|.tea|.twig|.vm|.fhtml|.sls|\
                .feature|.tap|.awk|.vim|.pot|.po|.weechatlog|.todotxt|.thy|\
                .lean|.rts|.u|.vcl|.bpl|.sil|.vpr|.cirru|.duel|.jbst|.qml|\
                .qbs|.slim|.xqy|.xquery|.xq|.xql|.xqm|.whiley|.x10)
                    # extension recognized
                    pygmentize -f 256 -O style=$PYGMENTIZE_STYLE "$path"
                    ;;
                *)
                    # parse the shebang script header if it exists
                    lexer=$(head -n 1 "$path" |grep "^#\!" |awk -F" " \
'match($1, /\/(\w*)$/, a) {if (a[1]!="env") {print a[1]} else {print $2}}')
                    case "$lexer" in
                        node|nodejs)
                            # workaround for lack of Node.js lexer alias
                            pygmentize -f 256 -O style=$PYGMENTIZE_STYLE \
                                -l js "$path"
                            ;;
                        "")
                            exit 1
                            ;;
                        *)
                            pygmentize -f 256 -O style=$PYGMENTIZE_STYLE \
                                -l $lexer "$path"
                            ;;
                    esac
                    ;;
            esac
            ;;
    esac
done
exit 0

The one drawback about this approach is that Pygments is a Python program, and so on first use during a shell session, there is a "cold start" delay. Subsequent invocations are much faster. — Joe Coder, Oct 12 '18 at 1:52

arsaKasra · Accepted Answer · 2014-05-25 19:52:43Z

Use the GNU Source-highlight; you can install it with apt if you have it, or otherwise install it from source. Then set up an "input preprocessor" for less, with help from the Source-highligh' documentations for setting up with less:

This was suggested by Konstantine Serebriany. The script src-hilite-lesspipe.sh will be installed together with source-highlight. You can use the following environment variables:

 export LESSOPEN="| /path/to/src-hilite-lesspipe.sh %s"
 export LESS=' -R '

This way, when you use less to browse a file, if it is a source file handled by source-highlight, it will be automatically highlighted.

Xavier-Emmanuel Vincent recently provided an alternative version of ANSI color scheme, esc256.style: some terminals can handle 256 colors. Xavier also provided a script which checks how many colors your terminal can handle, and in case, uses the 256 variant. The script is called source-highlight-esc.sh and it will be installed together with the other binaries.

Speeddymon · Accepted Answer · 2014-06-18 14:57:46Z

To expand upon another answer, you can make it work for most if not all of your scripts that don't have extensions by changing the .lessfilter file around just a bit:

#!/bin/sh
    case "$1" in
    *.awk|*.groff|*.java|*.js|*.m4|*.php|*.pl|*.pm|*.pod|*.sh|\
    *.ad[asb]|*.asm|*.inc|*.[ch]|*.[ch]pp|*.[ch]xx|*.cc|*.hh|\
    *.lsp|*.l|*.pas|*.p|*.xml|*.xps|*.xsl|*.axp|*.ppd|*.pov|\
    *.diff|*.patch|*.py|*.rb|*.sql|*.ebuild|*.eclass)
        pygmentize -f 256 "$1";;
    .bashrc|.bash_aliases|.bash_environment)
        pygmentize -f 256 -l sh "$1"
        ;;
    *)
        scriptExec=$(head -1 "$1" |grep "^#\!" |awk -F" " '{print $1}')
        scriptExecStatus=$?
        if [ "$scriptExecStatus" -eq "0" ]; then
            lexer=$(echo $scriptExec |awk -F/ '{print $NF}')
            pygmentize -f 256 -l $lexer "$1"
        else
            exit 1
        fi
esac

exit 0

You'd still need to add the two variables to .bashrc:

export LESS='-R'
export LESSOPEN='|~/.lessfilter %s'

And you'll still need to make .lessfilter executable:

$ chmod 700 ~/.lessfilter

Also I wanted to add that under debian the pygments package is called python-pygments. I had trouble locating it at first because the obvious misspelling of "pigments" as "pygments" wasn't enough of a hint to me that it was a package that might be prefixed with "python-" by the package manager.

2 comments: 1) Thanks for the improvement. 2) Phrases like "voted best answer" aren't great; that may change (in fact, if this is better than that answer, this post might become the top answer, at which point it'll just be confusing. Maybe just say "to expand upon another answer" or "captaincomic's answer"? — cpast, Feb 27 '13 at 23:07

Onlyjob · Accepted Answer · 2013-08-22 00:34:58Z

2

You can consider using most utility which is colour-friendly alternative for less and more.

answered Aug 22 '13 at 0:34

Onlyjob

3143 silver badges6 bronze badges

can you show us one example? I tried here, and the output was black and white. – danilo Jun 13 at 17:47
Your input should contain colours. First produce a colorised sample (e.g. ccze -A </var/log/dpkg.log, ls -1 --color /var/log) then pipe it to most: ls -1 --color /var/log | most. – Onlyjob Jun 15 at 0:06
yes, I used: git status | less --color, git status | most --color – danilo Jun 15 at 0:14
I used most, more, less, and all tools show black and white – danilo Jun 15 at 0:17
Make sure that your command produces colours before piping to less or others. Make sure your terminal emulator can output colours. Check TERM environment variable. Read more in unix.stackexchange.com/questions/148/… When possible use modern GNU+Linux distribution like Debian. Use search engine (e.g. duckduckgo.com startpage.com) to find answers. Remember that comments are not for discussion. – Onlyjob Jun 16 at 5:06

add a comment |

xuhdev · Accepted Answer · 2016-10-14 07:46:40Z

Condensed from my full blog post about improving less experience: https://www.topbug.net/blog/2016/09/27/make-gnu-less-more-powerful/

For colorful manpages, add the following to your .bashrc or .zshrc:

export LESS_TERMCAP_mb=$'\E[1;31m'     # begin bold
export LESS_TERMCAP_md=$'\E[1;36m'     # begin blink
export LESS_TERMCAP_me=$'\E[0m'        # reset bold/blink
export LESS_TERMCAP_so=$'\E[01;44;33m' # begin reverse video
export LESS_TERMCAP_se=$'\E[0m'        # reset reverse video
export LESS_TERMCAP_us=$'\E[1;32m'     # begin underline
export LESS_TERMCAP_ue=$'\E[0m'        # reset underline

For syntax highlighting, using an existing powerful lesspipe.sh to handle it instead of writing your own: https://github.com/wofr06/lesspipe

Wavesailor · Accepted Answer · 2018-05-31 09:59:32Z

I found this simple elegant solution. You don't have to install anything extra as it is already there by default on most machines. As vim is installed by default on most machines, it includes a macro to run vim like less

Some of the options to use it are to create an alias: alias vless='vim -u /usr/share/vim/vim74/macros/less.vim'

or create a symbolic link: ln -s /usr/share/vim/vim74/macros/less.sh ~/bin/vless

Then you just run vless myfile.py

I got most of the information here

I have alias lesser='/usr/share/vim/vim80/macros/less.sh' in ~/bash_aliases (in Ubuntu 18.04). Can use shortcuts such as f forward, b backward, d half down, u half up, q quit, etc... — Daniel, Jun 5 at 14:01

David Jung · Accepted Answer · 2019-01-22 02:44:37Z

The most intuitive and straight forward solution for me was using pygmentize
by adding the lines below to .bashrc

export LESS='-R'
export LESSOPEN='|pygmentize -g %s'

In case you couldn't call pygmentize, just install like

pip install pygments

ps. The pygmentize executable binary would sit in /usr/local/bin/ or in your /home/username/.virtualenv/venvname/bin/ or somewhere.

math0ne · Accepted Answer · 2018-01-25 18:35:55Z

-2

None of these were working out of the box for me and I figured out an easy way to make this work so I thought I would share.

Just use tmux, that allows you access and scroll through a larger history and preserves the colors perfectly.

answered Jan 25 '18 at 18:35

math0ne

1052 bronze badges

1

Doesn't tmux permit multiple terminals from one screen, how does it change less's display of colours? – Xen2050 Oct 26 '18 at 13:23
@Xen2050 I think it's a neat workaround although this answer doesn't explain how to enter scroll mode (Ctrl-b + [) – siikamiika Apr 18 at 18:30

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Leonardo Raele · Accepted Answer · 2019-07-15 12:50:13Z

-2

As long as the output text have color control characters, less -R will do.

answered Jul 15 at 12:50

Leonardo Raele

972 bronze badges

This is what another answer (from 9 years ago) says. Answers that duplicate other answers are not useful. – Kamil Maciorowski Jul 15 at 12:54
Fair, but that answer doesn't make it explicit that it only works on files that were built with color control characters. – Leonardo Raele Jul 15 at 13:13

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When reading a file with `less` or `more`, how can I get the content in colors?

migrated from stackoverflow.com Mar 9 '10 at 10:50

16 Answers 16

Install Pygments and Gawk

Set Environment Variables

Create `~/.lessfilter`

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When reading a file with `less` or `more`, how can I get the content in colors?

migrated from stackoverflow.com Mar 9 '10 at 10:50

16 Answers 16

Install Pygments and Gawk

Set Environment Variables

Create ~/.lessfilter

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Create `~/.lessfilter`