LPI Linux Certification in a Nutshell, 2nd Edition

Documentation (Topic 1.108)

Objective 1: Use and Manage Local System Documentation

Text and paging

• In the context of Linux systems, plain text means files or streams of both printable characters and control characters, using a standard encoding scheme such as ASCII.

• Differentiating text from nontext isn't obvious, but the file command examines a file given as its argument and offers a response that indicates the file type.

• A pager is a program intended to offer a quick and simple interface for viewing text files, one screen at a time.

• more is a popular pager available on most Unix systems.

• less is a full-featured text pager, which emulates more and offers significant advantages. Common less commands are listed in Table 24-1.

  Table 24-1. Common less commands

  less command	Description
  Space	Scroll forward one screen.
  D	Scroll forward one-half screen.
  Return	Scroll forward one line.
  B	Scroll backward one screen.
  U	Scroll backward one-half screen.
  Y	Scroll backward one line.
  g	Go to the beginning of the text (could be slow with large amounts of text).
  G	Go to the end of the text (could be slow with large amounts of text).
  / pattern	Search forward for pattern, which can be a regular expression.
  ? pattern	Search backward for pattern, which can be a regular expression.
  H	Display a help screen.
  :n	Display next file from command line (two-character command).
  :p	Display previous file from command line (two-character command).

• A pager such as less ...