[illumos-Developer] Requesting code review for opensource /usr/xpg4/bin/more replacement with "less" ...

[Joerg Schilling]

"Garrett D'Amore" <garrett at damore.org> wrote:

> On Mon, 2011-01-17 at 11:54 -0800, Adam Leventhal wrote:
> > Hey Roland,
> > 
> > Apologies if I missed this discussion, but why is this something that
> > should be in illumos? First less is not the same as more; second, why
> > wouldn't the downstream distros just include less if that's what they
> > wanted to do?
>
> Actually, it *is* the same as more, when called as "more".  In fact, the
> author of the original "more" utility on some platforms is the same as
> the author of "less".

I cm not willing to believe this.

more has a careful attempt to deal with the terminal that even works in case 
that there is no TERM set up, while less has an agressive attempt to deal with 
the terminal (to be specific, it deals with the terminal as if it was an 
editor) that is known to often fail.

A quick check with calling /usr/bin/less as more (more /etc/passwd) shows a 
flicker and then it looks as if nothing happened.

It would be nice if things were so simple that you really can use less to 
replace /usr/xpg4/bin/more.

Jörg

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