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Command: more | Section: 1 | Source: OpenBSD | File: more.1
MORE(1) FreeBSD General Commands Manual MORE(1)
NAME
more - view files
SYNOPSIS
more [-ceisu] [-n number] [-p command] [-t tag] [file ...]
DESCRIPTION
The more pager displays text one screenful at a time. After showing each
screenful, it prompts the user for a command. Most commands scroll the
text or move to a different place in the file, while some switch to
another file. If no file is specified, or if file is a single dash
(`-'), the standard input is used.
When showing the last line of a file, more displays a prompt indicating
end of file and the name of the next file to examine, if any. It then
waits for input from the user. Scrolling forward switches to the next
file, or exits if there is none.
The options are as follows:
-c When changing the display, paint from the top line down. The
default is to scroll from the bottom of the screen.
-e Exit immediately after showing the last line of the last file,
without prompting the user for a command first.
-i Ignore case. Upper case and lower case are considered identical.
-n number
Page number of lines per screenful. By default, more uses the
terminal window size.
-p command
Execute the specified more commands when a file is first examined
(or re-examined, such as with the :e or :p commands). Multiple
commands have to be concatenated into one single argument.
Search patterns may contain blank characters and can be
terminated by newline characters embedded in the command
argument. Any other blank and newline characters contained in
the argument are interpreted as SPACE and RETURN commands,
respectively.
-s Squeeze consecutive blank lines into a single blank line.
-t tag Examine the file containing tag. For more information, see
ctags(1).
-u Display backspaces as control characters (`^H') and leave CR-LF
sequences alone. By default, more treats backspaces and CR-LF
sequences specially: backspaces which appear adjacent to an
underscore character are displayed as underlined text; backspaces
which appear between two identical characters are displayed as
emboldened text; and CR-LF sequences are compressed to a single
linefeed character.
COMMANDS
Interactive commands for more are based on vi(1). Some commands may be
preceded by a decimal number, called N in the descriptions below. In the
following descriptions, ^X means control-X.
h Help: display a summary of these commands.
SPACE | f | ^F
Scroll forward N lines, default one window. If N is more
than the screen size, only the final screenful is displayed.
b | ^B Scroll backward N lines, default one window (see the -n
option). If N is more than the screen size, only the final
screenful is displayed.
j | RETURN Scroll forward N lines, default 1. The entire N lines are
displayed, even if N is more than the screen size.
k Scroll backward N lines, default 1. The entire N lines are
displayed, even if N is more than the screen size.
d | ^D Scroll forward N lines, default one half of the screen size.
If N is specified, it becomes the new default for subsequent
d and u commands.
u | ^U Scroll backward N lines, default one half of the screen size.
If N is specified, it becomes the new default for subsequent
d and u commands.
g Go to line N in the file, default 1 (beginning of file).
G Go to line N in the file, default the end of the file.
r | ^L Repaint the screen.
R Repaint the screen, discarding any buffered input. Useful if
the file is changing while it is being viewed.
m Followed by any lowercase letter, marks the current position
with that letter.
' (Single quote.) Followed by any lowercase letter, returns to
the position which was previously marked with that letter.
Followed by another single quote, returns to the position at
which the last "large" movement command was executed, or the
beginning of the file if no such movements have occurred.
All marks are lost when a new file is examined.
/pattern Search forward in the file for the N-th line containing the
pattern. N defaults to 1. The pattern is a basic regular
expression (BRE). See re_format(7) for more information on
regular expressions. The search starts at the second line
displayed.
?pattern Search backward in the file for the N-th line containing the
pattern. The search starts at the line immediately before
the top line displayed.
/!pattern Like /, but the search is for the N-th line which does NOT
contain the pattern.
?!pattern Like ?, but the search is for the N-th line which does NOT
contain the pattern.
n Repeat previous search, for N-th line containing the last
pattern (or NOT containing the last pattern, if the previous
search was /! or ?!).
N Repeat previous search in the opposite direction, for N-th
line containing the last pattern (or NOT containing the last
pattern, if the previous search was /! or ?!).
:e [filename]
Examine a new file. If the filename is missing, the
"current" file (see the :n and :p commands below) from the
list of files in the command line is re-examined. If the
filename is a pound sign (#), the previously examined file is
re-examined.
:n Examine the next file (from the list of files given in the
command line). If a number N is specified (not to be
confused with the command N), the N-th next file is examined.
:p Examine the previous file. If a number N is specified, the
N-th previous file is examined.
:t Go to supplied tag.
v Invokes an editor to edit the current file being viewed. The
editor is taken from the environment variable EDITOR, or
defaults to vi(1).
= | ^G These options print out the number of the file currently
being displayed relative to the total number of files there
are to display, the current line number, the current byte
number and the total bytes to display, and what percentage of
the file has been displayed. If more is reading from the
standard input, or the file is shorter than a single screen,
some of these items may not be available. Note, all of these
items reference the first byte of the last line displayed on
the screen.
q | :q | ZZ
Exits more.
ENVIRONMENT
COLUMNS Sets the number of columns on the screen. Takes precedence
over the number of columns specified by the TERM variable,
but may be overridden by window systems which support
TIOCGWINSZ.
EDITOR Specifies the default editor. If not set, vi(1) is used.
LINES Sets the number of lines on the screen. Takes precedence
over the number of lines specified by the TERM variable, but
may be overridden by window systems which support TIOCGWINSZ.
MORE Default command line options to use with more. The options
should be space-separated and must be prefixed with a dash
(`-').
TERM Specifies the terminal type. Used by more to get the
terminal characteristics necessary to manipulate the screen.
EXIT STATUS
The more utility exits 0 on success, and >0 if an error occurs.
EXAMPLES
Examine the ends of all files in the current directory, showing line and
byte counts for each:
$ more -p G= *
Examine several manual pages, starting from the options description in
the DESCRIPTION section:
$ more -p '/DESCRIPTION
> /options
> ' *.1
SEE ALSO
ctags(1), less(1), vi(1), re_format(7)
STANDARDS
The more utility is compliant with the IEEE Std 1003.1-2008 ("POSIX.1")
specification, though its presence is optional.
Functionality allowing the user to skip (as opposed to scroll) forward is
not currently implemented.
HISTORY
A more command appeared in 3.0BSD. The present implementation is
actually less(1) in disguise.
AUTHORS
Mark Nudelman
FreeBSD 14.1-RELEASE-p8 August 20, 2019 FreeBSD 14.1-RELEASE-p8