Bash – changing default (man) pager

bashmanpager

I'm working on Solaris 10, using bash. Want to change default pager from "more" to "less" (because "less is more" :). Tried to do the following:

PAGER=less

PS. When I do it in csh via

setenv PAGER less

then it works

Best Answer

Your

PAGER=less

sets the shell variable PAGER to the value less. For man (or anything other than the current shell) to see this, you will have to additionally make PAGER an environment variable. You do this with export, either through

PAGER=less
export PAGER

export PAGER=less

A shell variable is "exported into the environment" with export. This is the same in all sh-like shells. Exporting a variable in this way is the corollary to the csh/tcsh setenv command.

Related Solutions

Ssh – Why don’t Page U/Down, Home/End work in less on Solaris over ssh from Ubuntu

I found the answer here, in section 4.4. less (1).

to use it with the movement keys, have this plain ASCII file .lesskey in your home directory:

^[[A   back-line
^[[B   forw-line
^[[C   right-scroll
^[[D   left-scroll
^[OA   back-line
^[OB   forw-line
^[OC   right-scroll
^[OD   left-scroll
^[[6~  forw-scroll
^[[5~  back-scroll
^[[1~  goto-line
^[[4~  goto-end
^[[7~  goto-line
^[[8~  goto-end

then run the command lesskey. (These are escape sequences for vt100-like terminals.) This creates a binary file .less containing the key bindings.

Bash – How to send all output to a pager by default

I don't know if it is possible. But...

a couple of workaround are there:

in gnome-terminal you can see previous pages with Shift-PgUp / Shift-PgDn
if you use screen, you can see previous pages entering copy mode with Ctrl-a Esc, then moving around with PgUp, PgDn and other vi commands (to exit from copy mode, Esc).

Best Answer

Related Solutions

Ssh – Why don’t Page U/Down, Home/End work in less on Solaris over ssh from Ubuntu

Bash – How to send all output to a pager by default

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