Hi, Thanks for the report. There are several issues here, which I'll address one by one:
> Man says > -F or --quit-if-one-screen > Causes less to automatically exit if the entire file can be dis- > played on the first screen. > > However this is not true, try > $ LESS=XF less +G /etc/services > $ seq 111|LESS=FMXi less +G > They don't fit on the first screen but end less nonetheless. I believe this is fixed in less-424. Can you verify whether you still see the problem in this version? > Using plain LESS=F is even worse. They then seem like no-ops on my > xterm. The screen is restored before you notice anything. Only with > $ seq 1111111|LESS=F less +G > does the screen blank long enough so you know something happened. This is a different issue, caused by your termcap/terminfo which is using an alternate screen for curses-type programs. See http://www.greenwoodsoftware.com/less/faq.html#tite > Say, why can't less have an xargs-like > --no-run-if-empty > -r If the standard input does not contain any nonblanks, do not run > the command. Normally, the command is run once even if there is > no input. This option is a GNU extension. > > But for zero bytes of input. I.e., less senses that input has closed > already at the 0th byte, and just exits without sending a single > curses character to the terminal. I suppose that's possible, but it would be some work since less initializes the terminal before it tries reads anything from the input file. I would think it would be easier for the calling program to determine if the file is empty and just not invoke less in that case. > > Gee, never thought a simple pager program would end up not so > simple... but that's reality. > > P.S., > _ (Underscore.) Followed by one of the command line option let- > ters, this will print a message describing the current setting > of that option. The setting of the option is not changed. > > add a --dump-settings to dump them all at once. This would be rather awkward, since the complete list of settings wouldn't fit on one screen. You'd need some kind of scrolling commands to see all the options, and then a command to exit the "option display" mode. Seems rather complicated. --Mark -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [email protected] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [email protected]
