MORE(1) BSD General Commands Manual MORE(1)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 num‐
bers) 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 charac‐
ters, 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-wrap‐
ping 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 respec‐
tively, 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 con‐
fused 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 refer‐
ence 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 pre‐
ceeded 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.
SEE ALSOctags(1), global(1), gtags(1), vi(1)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 under‐
lining 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.
BSD April 18, 1994 BSD
