Is there ever a reason to use `cat` when you’ve got `less`

catless

I used to use cat to view files. Then I learned that less is usually better, and is a must if the file is longer than a few dozen rows.

My question: Is there ever a reason to use cat instead of less? Is there any situation where cat is a better solution?

Best Answer

I personally prefer view for static content or tail -f for dynamic content.

This does not answer your question, though. There is a saying "why use more if you have less" ;-)

But there are cases where I prefer cat to less: I usually work with X11-windows. These windows have a scroll-buffer which can be set to some hundred lines.

Doing a cat for - let's say 200 lines and then using the mouse with the scroll-bar is more comfortable to me than using less in these cases.

Related Solutions

Using more command

The more command is considerably older than the less command (1978 vs 1983ish). The less command was introduced as a 'backwards more' (because you could scroll up). The more command is part of the OS binaries with most modern unix/linux OSs, while less is maintained externally as an open source project.

I'll often use more on systems with the bare minimum OS installed because less isn't available or installed yet.

Bash – Use `cat` or `less` Depending on Line Count

To give you the formula which involves the wc-based check:

(($(wc -l<input_file)<=$(tput lines))) && echo 'will fit' || echo 'not enough'

There is a $LINES shell variable which can also be used:

(($(wc -l<input_file)<=LINES)) && echo 'will fit' || echo 'not enough'

But $LINES is updated only when at the command prompt. To understand what I mean, run this and resize the terminal window during the sleep:

( sleep 3; echo $LINES; tput lines )

Best Answer

Related Solutions

Using more command

Bash – Use `cat` or `less` Depending on Line Count

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