NAME

more — file perusal filter for crt viewing

SYNOPSIS

more [-ceinsu] [-t tag] [-x tabs] [-/ pattern] [file ...]

DESCRIPTION

The more command is a filter for paging through text one screenful at a time. It uses termcap(3) so it can run on a variety of terminals, including hardcopy terminals. On a hardcopy terminal, lines which should be printed at the top of the screen are prefixed with an up-arrow. A file may be specified as /dev/stdin to view stdin.

OPTIONS

Command line options are described below. Options are also taken from the environment variable MORE (make sure to precede them with a dash (``-'')) but command line options will override them.

-c: Normally, more will repaint the screen by scrolling from the bottom of the screen. If the -c option is set, when more needs to change the entire display, it will paint from the top line down.
-e: Normally, if displaying a single file, more exits as soon as it reaches end-of-file. The -e option tells more to exit if it reaches end-of-file twice without an intervening operation.
-i: The -i option causes searches to ignore case; that is, uppercase and lowercase are considered identical.
-n: The -n flag suppresses line numbers. The default (to use line numbers) may cause more to run more slowly in some cases, especially with a very large input file. Suppressing line numbers with the -n flag will avoid this problem. Using line numbers means: the line number will be displayed in the = command, and the v command will pass the current line number to the editor.
-s: The -s option causes consecutive blank lines to be squeezed into a single blank line.
-t: The -t option, followed immediately by a tag, will edit the file containing that tag. For more information, see ctags(1) and gtags(1).
-u: 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. CR-LF sequences are compressed to a single newline character. The -u option causes backspaces to always be displayed as control characters, i.e. as the two character sequence ``^H'', and CR-LF to be left alone.
-x: The -x option sets tab stops every N positions. The default for N is 8.
-/: The -/ option specifies a string that will be searched for before each file is displayed.

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. If you forget all the other commands, remember this one.
SPACE or f or ^F: Scroll forward N lines, default one window. If N is more than the screen size, only the final screenful is displayed.
b or ^B: Scroll backward N lines, default one window (see option -z below). If N is more than the screen size, only the final screenful is displayed.
j or RETURN or DOWN-ARROW: Scroll forward N lines, default 1. The entire N lines are displayed, even if N is more than the screen size.
k or UP-ARROW: Scroll backward N lines, default 1. The entire N lines are displayed, even if N is more than the screen size.
LEFT-ARROW: Scroll leftwards N columns, default 1, or turn on line-wrapping if the screen is cannot be scrolled leftwards.
RIGHT-ARROW: Turn off line-wrapping or scroll rightwards N columns, default 1, if line wrapping is already off.
TAB: Turn off line-wrapping or scroll rightwards N * 8 columns, default 8, if line-wrapping is already off.
HOME: Toggle horizontal scrolling and associated line-wrapping on and off.
d or ^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. The entire N lines are displayed, even if N is more than the screen size.
u or ^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. The entire N lines are displayed, even if N is more than the screen size.
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.
p or %: Go to a position N percent into the file. N should be between 0 and 100. This does work if standard input is being read, but only if more has already read to the end of the file. It is always fast, but not always useful.
r or ^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.
/pattern: Search forward in the file for the N-th line containing the pattern. N defaults to 1. The pattern is a IEEE Std 1003.2 (“POSIX.2”) “extended format” regular expression, as described in re_format(7). 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 and N: Repeat previous search, in same or opposite direction respectively, 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.
t: Go forward in tag queue [gtags only].
T: Go backward in tag queue [gtags only].
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).
= or ^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 stdin, 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 or :q or ZZ: Exits more.

ENVIRONMENT

The following environment variables are used, if they exist:

MORE: Specifies default option flags to more. Options must be preceeded by a “-” as if they were specified on the command line.
EDITOR: Specifies default editor.
SHELL: Specifies current shell in use. This is normally set by the shell at login time.
TERM: Specifies terminal type. This is used by more to get the terminal characteristics necessary to manipulate the screen.

BUGS

Reading files with long lines is slow.

CRLF-terminated 80 character lines are proceeded by an extraneous blank line.

Immediate transitions from bold text to underlined text cause the underlining to be not existing.

Sometimes searches match lines that do not contain the pattern being searched for.

AUTHORS

This software is derived from software contributed to Berkeley by Mark Nudleman.

HISTORY

The more command appeared in 3.0BSD.