Re: terminal weirdness?

[Ron DuFresne <dufresne () WINTERNET COM>]

over here, more and less are two different binaries. and the one which
identifies itself as more functions differently then less.  Granted, I get
what I have come used to more like behaviour with the less command, and
better less like behaviour with more, but;


man less:

DESCRIPTION
       Less  is  a  program similar to more (1), but which allows
       backward movement in the file as well as forward movement.
       Also,  less  does  not  have to read the entire input file
       before starting, so with large input files  it  starts  up
       faster  than  text editors like vi (1).  Less uses termcap
       (or terminfo on some systems), so it can run on a  variety
       of  terminals.  There is even limited support for hardcopy
       terminals.  (On a hardcopy terminal, lines which should be
       printed  at  the  top  of  the  screen are prefixed with a
       caret.)


strings /usr/bin/more |more  # an oxymoron command??!!

or preferably:

strings /usr/bin/more |grep term/TERM

as opposed to:

strings /usr/bin/less |grep term/TERM

makes one feel that they are whom they claim to be, each a seperate
entity, but, I'm surely missing something...

Thanks,

Ron DuFresne


On Fri, 9 Mar 2001, Allen J. Newton wrote:

> Hi, Blue Boar, you wrote:
> > Date:         Thu, 8 Mar 2001 10:22:23 -0800
> > Subject:      Re: terminal weirdness?
>
> > Matt Zimmerman wrote:
> > > This is a feature.  When your terminal software receives an ENQ character, it
> > > will send back the name of your terminal (e.g., "vt100" or "xterm"), or
> > > whatever else it's been instructed to send back.  Try it (ENQ is ASCII 5).
> > >
> > > This is also the reason why receiving random binary data on a terminal will
> > > often cause the terminal name to be printed many times.
> >
> > OK, so now can someone tell me why doing a more on binary files
> > often leaves me sitting in ed?
> >
> >                                     BB
>
> Yes.  :-)
>
> If you're using a GNU version of "more" (or "less"), a "v" command will launch
> your editor (specified in your EDITOR environment variable) or the default
> editor (usually /bin/ed).  So when a \005 (ASCII 5) is printed, it elicits
> that "VT200" (or whatever you said) response to STDIN -- and the "V" tells
> more to edit the file being viewed.
>
> If you're running Linux, "more" is "less" by default...  ;-)
>
> --
> Allen J. Newton  (anewton () alturia fleet org) -- Team *AMIGA*

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