MORE(1) General Commands Manual MORE(1)

more — display files on a page-by-page basis

more [-ceisu][-n number][-p command][-t tagstring][file ...]

more [-ceisu][-n number][+command][-t tagstring][file ...]

The more utility reads files and either writes them to the terminal on a page-by-page basis or filters them to standard output. If standard output is not a terminal device, all input files are copied to standard output in their entirety, without modification. If standard output is a terminal device, the files will be written a number of lines (one screenful) at a time under the control of user commands; see the EXTENDED DESCRIPTION section.

Certain block-mode terminals do not have all the capabilities necessary to support the complete more definition; they are incapable of accepting commands that are not terminated with a newline character. Implementations that support such terminals provide an operating mode to more in which all commands can be terminated with a newline character on those terminals. This mode will:

  • be documented in the system documentation
  • at invocation, inform the user of the terminal deficiency that requires the newline character usage and provide instructions on how this warning can be suppressed in future invocations
  • not be required for implementations supporting only fully capable terminals
  • not affect commands already requiring newline characters
  • not affect users on the capable terminals from using more as described in this specification

The more utility supports the XBD specification, , except that +command of the obsolescent version uses a non-standard syntax.

The following options are supported:

If a screen is to be written that has no lines in common with the current screen, or more is writing its first screen, more will not scroll the screen, but instead will redraw each line of the screen in turn, from the top of the screen to the bottom. In addition, if more is writing its first screen, the screen will be cleared. This option may be ignored on devices that do not have the ability to clear to the end of a line or the end of a screen.
Exit immediately after writing the last line of the last file in the argument list; see the EXTENDED DESCRIPTION section.
Perform pattern matching in searches without regard to case. See the XBD specification, .
Specify the number of lines per screenful. The number argument is a positive decimal integer. The -n option overrides any values obtained from the environment.
 
For each file examined, initially execute the more command in the command argument. If the command is a positioning command, such as a line number or a regular expression search, set the current position (see the EXTENDED DESCRIPTION section) to represent the final results of the command, without writing any intermediate lines of the file. For example, the two commands: 
more -p 1000j file
more -p 1000G file
would be equivalent and start the display with the current position at line 1000, bypassing the lines that j would write and scroll off the screen if it had been issued during the file examination. If the positioning command is unsuccessful, the first line in the file will be the current position.
Replace consecutive empty lines with a single empty line.
Write the screenful of the file containing the tag named by the tagstring argument. See the ctags(1) utility. The tags feature represented by -t tagstring and the :t command is optional. It is provided on any system that also provides a conforming implementation of ctags(1) ; otherwise, the use of -t produces undefined results.
Treat a backspace character as a printable control character, displayed as an implementation-dependent character sequence (see the EXTENDED DESCRIPTION section), suppressing backspacing and the special handling that produces underlined or standout-mode text on some terminal types. Also, do not ignore a carriage-return character at the end of a line.

If both the -t tagstring and -p command (or the obsolescent +command) options are given, the -t tagstring will be processed first; that is, the file containing the tag is selected by -t and then the command is executed.

The following operand is supported:

file
A pathname of an input file. If no file operands are specified, the standard input will be used. If a file is "-", the standard input will be read at that point in the sequence.

The standard input will be used only if no file operands are specified, or if a file operand is "-".

The input files being examined must be text files. If standard output is a terminal, standard error will be used to read commands from the user. If standard output is a terminal, standard error is not readable, and command input is needed, more will terminate with an error indicating that it was unable to read user commands. If standard output is not a terminal, no error will result if standard error cannot be opened for reading.

The following environment variables affect the execution of more :

Override the system-selected horizontal screen size. See the XBD specification, Environment Variables for valid values and results when it is unset or null.
Used by the v command to select an editor; see the EXTENDED DESCRIPTION section.
Provide a default value for the internationalisation variables that are unset or null. If LANG is unset or null, the corresponding value from the implementation-dependent default locale will be used. If any of the internationalisation variables contains an invalid setting, the utility will behave as if none of the variables had been defined.
If set to a non-empty string value, override the values of all the other internationalisation variables.
Determine the locale for the behaviour of ranges, equivalence classes and multi-character collating elements within regular expressions.
Determine the locale for the interpretation of sequences of bytes of text data as characters (for example, single- as opposed to multi-byte characters in arguments and input files) and the behaviour of character classes within regular expressions.
Determine the locale that should be used to affect the format and contents of diagnostic messages written to standard error and informative messages written to standard output.
Determine the location of message catalogues for the processing of LC_MESSAGES .
Override the system-selected vertical screen size, used as the number of lines in a screenful. See the XBD specification, Environment Variables for valid values and results when it is unset or null. The -n option takes precedence over the LINES variable for determining the number of lines in a screenful.
Determine a string containing options described in the OPTIONS section preceded with hyphens and blank-character-separated as on the command line. Any command-line options are processed after those in the MORE variable, as if the command line were: 
more $MORE options operands
The MORE variable takes precedence over the TERM and LINES variables for determining the number of lines in a screenful.
Determine the name of the terminal type. If this variable is unset or null, an unspecified default terminal type will be used.

Default.

The standard output will be used to write the contents of the input files.

Used for diagnostic messages and user commands (see the INPUT FILES section), and, if standard output is a terminal device, to write a prompting string. The prompting string will only appear as the last line of the screen and will contain the name of the file currently being examined, but it is otherwise unspecified. User input for the / , ? , :e and :t commands will be written on the same line of the screen as the prompt. It is unspecified if informational messages are written for other user commands.

None.

The number of lines available per screen is determined by the -n option, if present or by examining values in the environment (see the ENVIRONMENT VARIABLES section). If neither method yields a number, an unspecified number of lines will be used. The actual number of lines written will be one less than this number, as the last line of the screen will be used to write a user prompt and user input. If the number of lines available per screen is less than four, the results are undefined.

In the following descriptions, the refers to two things:

  • the position of the current line on the screen
  • the line number (in the file) of the current line on the screen.

Usually, the line on the screen corresponding to the current position is the third line on the screen. If this is not possible (there are fewer than three lines to display or this is the first page of the file, or it is the last page of the file), then the current position is either the first or last line on the screen as described later.

The number of columns available per line is determined by examining values in the environment (see the ENVIRONMENT VARIABLES section), with a default value as described in the XBD specification, envvar(7) . The more utility writes lines containing more characters than would fit into this number of columns by breaking the line into one or more logical lines where each of these lines but the last contains the number of characters needed to fill the columns. The logical lines are written independently of each other; that is, commands affecting a single line affect them separately.

When standard output is a terminal and -u is not specified, more treats backspace characters and carriage-return characters specially:

  • A character, followed first by a backspace character, then by an underscore (_), will cause that character to be written as underlined text, if the terminal type supports that. An underscore, followed first by a backspace character, then any character, will also cause that character to be written as underlined text, if the terminal type supports that.
  • A backspace character that appears between two identical printable characters will cause the first of those two characters to be written as emboldened text (that is, visually brighter, standout mode or inverse-video mode), if the terminal type supports that, and the second to be discarded. Immediately subsequent occurrences of backspaces/character pairs for that same character will also be discarded. (For example, the sequence a\ba\ba\ba is interpreted as a single emboldened a.)
  • Other backspace character sequences will be written directly to the terminal, which generally cause the character preceding the backspace character to be suppressed in the display.
  • A carriage-return character at the end of a line will be ignored, rather than being written as a control character, as described in the next paragraph.

It is implementation-dependent how other non-printable characters are written. Implementations should use the same format that they use for the ex command.

If the -t option was specified, more will write a screen of the file containing the specified tag in the current position.

If the -p option was specified, more will execute the command supplied in the command option-argument, and write the screen so that the current position is the current position that would result from applying that command to the input file.

If neither the -p or -t options were specified, more will write the first screen of the first input file.

Once the initial screen has been written, more will prompt the user and, based on the interactive user input, will modify the screen or exit. If the modification of the screen results in a screen that has lines in common with the current screen, more will scroll the screen rather than clearing and redrawing the screen (unless the -c option is specified). If the modification of the screen results in a screen that has no lines in common with the current screen, more will clear and redraw the screen.

If the standard output is not a terminal device, more will always exit when it reaches end-of-file on the last file in its argument list. Otherwise, for all files but the last, more will prompt, with an indication that it has reached the end-of-file, along with the name of the next file. For the last file specified, or for the standard input if no file is specified, more will prompt, indicating end-of-file, and accept additional commands. If the next command specifies forward scrolling, more will exit. If the -e option is specified, more will exit immediately after writing the last line of the last file.

Several of the commands described in this section move the current position backwards in the input stream. In the case that text is being taken from a non-rewindable stream, such as a pipe, it is implementation-dependent how much backward motion is supported.

If a scrolling command cannot be performed because there are insufficient lines to scroll, more will alert the terminal. The scrolling commands are b, <control>-B, d, <control>-D, f, <control>-F, g, G, j, k, s, u and <control>-U.

The interactive commands in the following sections are supported. Some commands can be preceded by a decimal integer, called count in the following descriptions. If not specified with the command, count defaults to 1.

In the following descriptions, pattern is a basic regular expression, as described in the XBD specification, re(7) . The term "examine" is historical usage meaning "open the file for viewing"; for example, more foo would be expressed as examining file foo.

Synopsis:   h

Write a summary of these commands and other implementation-dependent commands.

Synopsis:   [count]f
Synopsis:   [count]<control>-F

Move forward count lines, with a default of one screenful. At end-of-file, more will continue with the next file in the list, or exit if the current file is the last file in the list.

Synopsis:   [count]b
Synopsis:   [count]<control>-B

Move backward count lines, with a default of one screenful (see option -n). If count is more than the screen size, only the final screenful will be written.

Synopsis:   [count]<space>
Synopsis:   [count]j
Synopsis:   [count]<newline>

Scroll forward count lines. The default count for the space character will be one screenful; for j and newline character, one line. The entire count lines will be written, even if count is more than the screen size. At end-of-file, a newline character will cause more to continue with the next file in the list, or exit if the current file is the last file in the list.

Synopsis:   [count]k

Scroll backward count lines, with a default of 1. The entire count lines will be written, even if count is more than the screen size.

Synopsis:   [count]d
Synopsis:   [count]<control>-D

Scroll forward count lines, with a default of one half of the screen size. If count is specified, it will become the new default for subsequent d and u commands.

Synopsis:   [count]s

Skip forward count lines, with a default of 1, and write the next screenful beginning at that point. If count would cause the current position to be such that less than one screenful would be written, the last screenful in the file will be written.

Synopsis:   [count]u
Synopsis:   [count]<control>-U

Scroll backward count lines, with a default of one half of the screen size. If count is specified, it will become the new default for subsequent d and u commands.

Synopsis:   [count]g

Go to line count in the file, with a default of 1 (beginning of file). Scroll or rewrite the screen so that that line is at the current position.

Synopsis:   [count]G

Go to line count in the file, with a default of the end of the file. If no count is specified, scroll or rewrite the screen so that the last line in the file is at the bottom of the screen. If count is specified, scroll or rewrite the screen so that that line is at the current position.

Synopsis:   r
Synopsis:   <control>-L

Refresh the screen.

Synopsis:   R

Refresh the screen, discarding any buffered input. If the current file is non-seekable, buffered input will not be discarded and the command is equivalent to the command.

Synopsis:   mletter

Mark the current position with the letter named by letter, where letter represents the name of one of the lower-case letters of the portable character set. When a new file is examined, all marks may be lost.

Synopsis:   'letter

Return to the position that was previously marked with the letter named by letter, making that line the current position.

Synopsis:   "

Return to the position from which the last large movement command was executed (where a "large movement" is defined as any movement of more than a screenful of lines). If no such movements have been made, return to the beginning of the file.

Synopsis: [count]/[!]pattern<newline>

Search forward in the file for the count th line containing the pattern. The count defaults to 1. The search will start at the line following the current position. If the search is successful, the screen will be modified so that the searched-for line is in the current position. The null regular expression (/ followed by a newline character) will repeat the search using the previous regular expression. If the character "!" is included, the lines for searching will be those that do not contain the pattern.

If a match is found for the pattern, the logical line containing the pattern will be written in the current position. If the matching line is already on the screen, the screen will be scrolled to make that line the current position; otherwise, a full screen will be written. If no match is found for the pattern, a message to that effect will be written as a part of the prompt, and the screen and the current position will remain unchanged. However, if no match is found and the input is the standard input, the screen may be scrolled to the last screenful of the input.

Synopsis: [count]?[!]pattern<newline>

Search backward in the file for the count th line containing the pattern. The search will start at the line immediately before the current position. If the search is successful, the screen will be modified so that the searched-for line is in the current position. The null regular expression (? followed by a newline character) will repeat the search using the previous regular expression. If the character "!" is included, the lines for searching will be those that do not contain the pattern.

If a match is found for the pattern, the logical line containing the pattern will be written in the current position. If the matching line is already on the screen, the screen will be scrolled to make that line the current position; otherwise, a full screen will be written. If no match is found for the pattern, a message to that effect will be written as a part of the prompt, and the screen and the current position will remain unchanged. However, if no match is found and the input is the standard input, the screen may be scrolled to the last screenful of the input.

Synopsis: [count]n

Repeat the previous search for count th line (default 1) containing the last pattern (or not containing the last pattern, if the previous search was /! or ?!).

Synopsis: [count]N

Repeat the search in the opposite direction of the previous search for the count th line (default 1) containing the last pattern (or not containing the last pattern, if the previous search was /! or ?!).

Synopsis: :e [filename]<newline>

Examine a new file. If the filename argument is not specified, the current file (see the and commands below) from the list of files in the command line will be reexamined. The filename will be subjected to the process of shell word expansions (see chap2(1)); if more than a single pathname results, the effects are unspecified. If filename is a number sign (#), the previously examined file will be reexamined. If filename refers to a non-seekable file, the results are unspecified.

Synopsis: [count]:n

Examine the next file. If a number count is specified, the count th next file will be examined. If filename refers to a non-seekable file, the results are unspecified.

Synopsis: [count]:p

Examine the previous file. If a number count is specified, the count th previous file will be examined. If filename refers to a non-seekable file, the results are unspecified.

Synopsis: :t tagstring<newline>

Go to the supplied tagstring and scroll/rewrite the screen with that line in the current position; see the -t option. If the utility is not supported by the system, the use of :t produces undefined results.

Synopsis:   v

Invoke an editor to edit the current file being examined. If standard input is being examined, the results are unspecified. The name of the editor will be taken from the environment variable EDITOR , or defaults to vi. If EDITOR represents either vi or ex, the editor will be invoked with options such that the current editor line is the physical line corresponding to the current position in more at the time of invocation. For example, either ex or vi is invoked by specifying the editor name and following that with -c . It is implementation-dependent whether line-setting options are passed to editors other than vi and ex.

The file types that can be edited are implementation-dependent.

When the editor exits, more will resume on the current file by rewriting the screen with the current line as the current position.

Synopsis:   =
Synopsis:   <control>-G

Write the name of the file currently being examined, the number relative to the total number of files there are to examine, the current line number, the current byte number and the total bytes to write and what percentage of the file precedes the current position. If more is reading from standard input, or the file is shorter than a single screen, some of these items need not be written. All of these items will reference the first byte of the line after the last line written.

Synopsis:   q
Synopsis:   :q
Synopsis:   ZZ

Exit more.

The following exit values are returned:

Successful completion.
An error occurred.

If an error is encountered accessing a file when using the :n command, more will attempt to examine the next file in the argument list, but the final exit status will be affected. If an error is encountered accessing a file via the :p command, more will attempt to examine the previous file in the argument list, but the final exit status will be affected. If an error is encountered accessing a file via the :e command, more will remain in the current file and the final exit status will not be affected.

The operating mode referred to for block-mode terminals effectively adds a newline character to each synopsis line that currently has none. So, for example, d <newline> would page one screenful. The mode could be triggered by a command-line option, environment variable or some other method.

When the standard output is not a terminal, none of the filter-modification options are effective. This is based on historical practice. For example, a typical implementation of man pipes its output through more -s to squeeze excess white space for terminal users. When man is piped to , however, it is undesirable for this squeezing to happen.

The -p allows arbitrary commands to be executed at the start of each file. Examples are:

Examine each file starting with its last screenful.
Examine each file starting with line 100 in the current position (usually the third line, so line 98 would be the first line written).
Examine each file starting with the first line containing the string 100 in the current position

The IEEE PASC 1003.2 Interpretations Committee has forwarded concerns about parts of this interface definition to the IEEE PASC 1003.2 Interpretations Committee which is identifying the corrections. A future revision of this specification will align with IEEE Std. 1003.2b when finalised.

None.

February 1997 posix.fail