Less is more!
this post was submitted on 20 May 2025
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Linux
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Less, then "vim -" after I realize I don't know how to use less.
alias less='moar'
I use more because I learned more first. Now it's in muscle memory, so I won't change anytime soon.
It's said that less is more but I more or less use less more than more.
I both understood that sentence perfectly and sounded like a crazy person while reading it out loud.
This would fit in perfectly in Dr Suess' Hop on pop
Been using Less for so long...
Forgot More existed. 🤷♂️
I don't know why anyone would use more when less is more with more features.
Less, but actually bat
I use bat sometimes, but how do you stop it from wrapping lines?
I use bat sometimes, but how do you stop it from wrapping lines?
$ cat ~/.config/bat/config
--wrap=never
$ cat ~/.config/bat/config
The irony.
I ain't got no time for no config! I'm a busy man!
You dropped your friggin' > in another thread and I just stepped on it. Pain like Lego.
Souldn't there be two of those to append?
Ow! ^
alias more=lessGodless heathen here.
At least I use bash!
Yes?
"less". If its a small file i use cat. If i want the top I use "head" or "tail' for the bottom. For a specific string i use "grep"
I feel like more punctuation was called for here. /s
bat.
I'm not sure if I've used more in the last 25 years. And when I did I think it was in MS-DOS.
LESSOPEN='| highlight --line-numbers -qs candy --out-format=xterm256 --stdout -i %s'
is that an alias or a sys env?
Sys env. It adds syntax highlighting to less. Needs the highlight tool of course, there are others.
oh, it literally pipes into another tool! I thought that vertical bar was a config option for less lmao
Yeah, less is weird there with needing the pipe.
less or bat, but I usually use by paging up and down so it's not that different from more... My terminal emulator only pages up and down, I like it that way.
I use a teletype. My scrollback is INFINITE.
your buffer size must exceed several floppies!
tail -f of vim
more only if less is not available
Neither, bat or neovim.
I like that more behaves like cat when there's less than a page of output rather than requiring you to press q to get back to the prompt even when it would just fit.
There's probably a way to make less do that too, but more already does it without configuration. Overall I use less most of the time but I like having the option.
I thought Less is More?
But because it comes first that is what I usually use.
I use less always, and am genuinely puzzled by people who use more
Old habits die hard? I used to administer old SunOS machines that didn’t have less (and would take considerable effort to install on all of the machines) so these days I just alias more to less
Most!
More
Depends…
Isn't more like the main driver for our prospering civilization?
Some might say that the shift in desiring less is the downward path for the over-saturated humanity.
But lets not get too deep here.
Could you be more cryptic?
Those are two pager programs on Linux. less has more features than more and that's what most people use.
What's a pager program?
Allows you to scroll through / view a text file in the terminal.
RTFM.
Yes, back in days of yore when the cyberbunnies had to run their lines through the bare wastes of the great Dave's router, there existed a tool so coveted by the eunuchs that they named it twice, and would beg for degrees of release depending on how gimped up they were. "More" some would scream, "less" others would whisper.