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> The first time I accidentally ran "less" on a directory and it piped some version of "ls" into itself, I was mildly annoyed. % less . . is a director

by cbd1984 12y ago

> The first time I accidentally ran "less" on a directory and it piped some version of "ls" into itself, I was mildly annoyed. % less . . is a directory % less imadir imadir is a directory My point is, that behavior is a configuration issue on your end, not inherent to the less codebase.

naner 12y ago
I believe that is the point of the linked email. Some distributions have less symlinked to something else (e.g. the lesspipe script) for convenience. Plain 'ol less isn't that much of a problem.
username223 12y ago
> My point is, that behavior is a configuration issue on your end, ... On my end, and on every "end" where I ever log in. "less" works as a simple pager on my own system, but now I need to remember to possibly fix it everywhere else. "You can fix it in the config file" is not an excuse for broken-by-design software. > ... not inherent to the less codebase. Well yes, it kind of is. "less" used to be a better replacement for "more." Now it's something else, which should have a different name. Should "cat" be changed to automatically uncompress files and concatenate archives?
- lmm 12y ago
  > Well yes, it kind of is. "less" used to be a better replacement for "more." Now it's something else, which should have a different name. Should "cat" be changed to automatically uncompress files and concatenate archives? "less" already means "pager with all the bells and whistles". If you just want a simple pager, "more" is still there. How many fine gradations do you need?
  - ansible 12y ago
    Back in the old, old days, we all started using 'less' because 'more' did not have the ability to scroll backwards through a file. Nor was it buffering pipe input to enable similar functionality. It seems there has been a bit of feature creep in the ensuing 25 years...
    - drummer32 12y ago
      Yup, cause apparenlty staying the same for 25 years is the new normal. Would you discard more too if it added the ability to page back in a document?
      - ansible 12y ago
        No, but if the maintainers added the ability to play MP3s and file my taxes, that is a cause for concern.
- oftenwrong 12y ago
  You could replace your less with the busybox version of less, which does not support LESSOPEN.
dllthomas 12y ago
My understanding is that the less codebase has the hooks (LESSOPEN and LESSCLOSE), and it's configurable (by presence or absence of the variables) whether they're used.

by cbd1984 12y ago

naner 12y ago

I believe that is the point of the linked email. Some distributions have less symlinked to something else (e.g. the lesspipe script) for convenience. Plain 'ol less isn't that much of a problem.

username223 12y ago

> My point is, that behavior is a configuration issue on your end, ... On my end, and on every "end" where I ever log in. "less" works as a simple pager on my own system, but now I need to remember to possibly fix it everywhere else. "You can fix it in the config file" is not an excuse for broken-by-design software. > ... not inherent to the less codebase. Well yes, it kind of is. "less" used to be a better replacement for "more." Now it's something else, which should have a different name. Should "cat" be changed to automatically uncompress files and concatenate archives?

lmm 12y ago
> Well yes, it kind of is. "less" used to be a better replacement for "more." Now it's something else, which should have a different name. Should "cat" be changed to automatically uncompress files and concatenate archives? "less" already means "pager with all the bells and whistles". If you just want a simple pager, "more" is still there. How many fine gradations do you need?
- ansible 12y ago
  Back in the old, old days, we all started using 'less' because 'more' did not have the ability to scroll backwards through a file. Nor was it buffering pipe input to enable similar functionality. It seems there has been a bit of feature creep in the ensuing 25 years...
  - drummer32 12y ago
    Yup, cause apparenlty staying the same for 25 years is the new normal. Would you discard more too if it added the ability to page back in a document?
    - ansible 12y ago
      No, but if the maintainers added the ability to play MP3s and file my taxes, that is a cause for concern.
oftenwrong 12y ago
You could replace your less with the busybox version of less, which does not support LESSOPEN.

dllthomas 12y ago

My understanding is that the less codebase has the hooks (LESSOPEN and LESSCLOSE), and it's configurable (by presence or absence of the variables) whether they're used.