Linux – How to search for tabs in the linux command less

strace man

reveals that it just calls pager.

man pager

$ ls -al /usr/bin/pager
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 23 2009-08-18 17:30 /usr/bin/pager -> /etc/alternatives/pager
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 13 2009-08-18 17:19 /etc/alternatives/pager -> /usr/bin/less

so less has some presets which are invoked when called by the name pager.

Actually strace also reveals these environment variables:

"LESSCHARSET=utf-8",
"LESS=-ix8RmPm Manual page less(1) ?ltline %lt?L/%L.:byte %bB?s/%s..?e 
(END):?pB %pB\\%..$PM Manual page less(1) ?ltline %lt?L/%L.:byte %bB?s/%s..?e
(END):?pB %pB\\%..$",

So that's it!

From the man page:

   -ppattern or --pattern=pattern
          The  -p  option  on the command line is equivalent to specifying
          +/pattern; that is, it tells less to start at the  first  occur-
          rence of pattern in the file.

This works as expected using the latest version of less (436).