Viewing files: less

Objectives
  • View and scroll through the contents of files. 
Prerequisites

None.

Overview

You can use less to scroll through the text content of a file one screenful at a time.

Viewing a file with less

sarah@laptop ~/documents/drafts$ less report.txt

The above command shows as much of ~/documents/drafts/report.txt as can fit on your terminal screen. 

→ Scroll up and down with your arrow keys.

→ The : at the bottom left indicates that there is more content to scroll through.

→ Press Q to quit and return to the terminal.

Activity

  • Open a terminal, stay in your home directory or navigate to any other directory.
  • View a listing of the directory contents, choose a file, and view it with less.
  • Change the size of your terminal window and notice how the file content is reformatted to fit the screen.
  • Scroll up and down.
  • Return to the terminal.
Hide hints
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Learning more

The less command has many options and key combinations you can use to scroll forward, scroll backward, search, jump to a specific line number, set up colours, and much, much more.

When you're ready to do more with less, be sure to use the --help option to explore all it has to offer.

Summary

  • View and scroll through the contents of files with less .