How to search a file using “less” for a value with a decimal point

Since piping directly didn't work, I tried connecting tail -f, sed and less +F via a temporary file. Ended up with the following

function lessx {
    [ -f "$1" ] || { echo "First argument must be a file"; return 1; }
    local tmpfile=$(mktemp /tmp/"$(basename "$1.XXX")")
    [ -f "$tmpfile" ] || { echo '`mktemp` failed'; return 1; }
    tail -f "$1" | stdbuf -i0 -o0 sed 's:\\\?\\n:\n:g' > "$tmpfile" &
    less +F "$tmpfile"
    kill %% # kill the tail pipeline, after less exits
    rm "$tmpfile"
}

which does the job, though it's more complicated than I'd like. Note that my SunOS tail doesn't understand --pid, so I manually kill the tail pipeline.

Probably not: the manual page for less does not mention wrapping, and the description of the search feature does not hint it is possible.