Less or More in Windows?

Question

Is there a command in the Windows DOS prompt that is equivalent to the UNIX less or more?

Basically, the problem is that when I type hg log, the output has too many lines to fit on the screen and I want to paginate it.

Any ideas on how to solve this problem?

less: http://www.greenwoodsoftware.com/less/ it is part of the gnuwin32 set of ports for windows: http://gnuwin32.sourceforge.net/packages.html — MaQleod, May 19 '12 at 02:41
what is wrong with the "more" command that has been a part of the command interpreter for as long as I can remember? I am guessing DOS 5.x and Winnt 3.x AT LEAST and newer. Did you even TRY to use the more command as you would in linux?? IT WORKS. — Señor CMasMas, Mar 03 '21 at 18:06

Renan · Answer 1 · 2012-05-19T03:05:46.673

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Windows has the command more. E.g. (Taken from Wikipedia)

To display the file named letter.txt on the screen, the user can type either of the following two commands:

 more < letter.txt
 type letter.txt | more

So in your case you want hg log | more.

For heavier usage you will want something like UnxUtils or GnuWin32, which have a more powerful less utility.

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edited May 19 '12 at 03:05

answered May 18 '12 at 23:55

Renan

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Yea, but the Windoze version only pauses the screen for a page at a time. You can't page up and down through the output. I've never used gow (mentioned in another reply) but I use UnxUtils every day. I love having grep, more, head, tail, sed, wc and other tools in Windoze. – Tom May 19 '12 at 02:35
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@Tom: That is what `more` does on \*nix as well. `less` is the one with backwards scrolling support, as you've noticed. – Daniel Andersson May 20 '12 at 21:31
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Get less. less is more. – hookenz Mar 04 '19 at 20:21
unfortunately, `hg diff | less` and `hg diff | more` don't preserve color highlighting, so unlike with git, with hg one either has colorful text or scrolling... (tested on Win 10 x64, with `less` from UnxUtils, in cmd) – YakovL Mar 12 '19 at 12:25

score 9 · Answer 2 · edited Jun 12 '20 at 13:48

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On Windows 10, you can install the Windows Subsystem for Linux:

The Windows Subsystem for Linux lets developers run Linux environments -- including most command-line tools, utilities, and applications -- directly on Windows, unmodified, without the overhead of a virtual machine.

Once installed, start bash.exe and run less /mnt/c/temp/test.txt to open the file test.txt located in c:\temp.

edited Jun 12 '20 at 13:48

Community

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answered Feb 22 '18 at 08:50

Mathias

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This is the most up-to-date answer here! – Param Siddharth Oct 15 '20 at 02:37

score 7 · Answer 3 · answered May 19 '12 at 02:09

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If you don't mind installing additional software gow is a nice toolkit with a set of standalone unix style tools that you can use, including less and more - it requires an install since it adds itself to path, but you can copy and use the install directory elsewhere as well.

answered May 19 '12 at 02:09

Journeyman Geek

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This toolkit is epic! less, grep, wget, curl, ssh, whereis.. and many more standard unix console tools, directly in windows CMD! and only 18MB.. windows CMD is now actually useful – Michelrandahl May 27 '16 at 11:01

score 4 · Answer 4 · answered Aug 20 '15 at 10:03

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Up-to-date less build for Windows is here: http://adoxa.altervista.org/less/index.html

answered Aug 20 '15 at 10:03

johndoe

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Thanks. `less` is a very important tool. Other implementation I have used suffer from the MSVCRT console I/O bug: https://yongweiwu.wordpress.com/2016/05/27/msvcrt-dll-console-io-bug/. This one is working well. – Yongwei Wu Jun 22 '17 at 13:05
Thank God for that utils to be ported on windows, I feel much better now! :) – fduff Jul 24 '18 at 11:00

score 2 · Answer 5 · answered Mar 03 '21 at 18:00

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I install a ready-to-run less via choco:

choco install less

https://chocolatey.org/packages/Less

It uses the binary generated by the aforementioned less-Windows

answered Mar 03 '21 at 18:00

juwens

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winget install jftuga.less – alexei Apr 22 '23 at 08:29

score 1 · Answer 6 · answered Nov 22 '20 at 19:00

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Here you can find up-to-date less builds for Windows: https://github.com/jftuga/less-Windows/releases

This are the reccomended Windows builds on the less official download page.

answered Nov 22 '20 at 19:00

Piz

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score 0 · Answer 7 · answered Jul 22 '22 at 12:00

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I used UnxUtils for many years. In most recent installations, I just use the Git for Windows which embeds mingw-based utilities. It installs all same commands than UnxUtils and also includes compression utilities variants like zcat, zless.

answered Jul 22 '22 at 12:00

Amadeu Barbosa

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score 0 · Answer 8 · answered Mar 17 '23 at 05:32

If you're running a recent version of Windows and have Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL) installed, you can run Linux's less directly from CMD:

wsl less "my file.txt"

File paths must be expressed in terms of the WSL filesystem:

wsl less "/mnt/c/Users/coejoder/Documents/my file.txt"

Or converted using wslpath in a subshell:

wsl less "$(wslpath "C:\Users\coejoder\Documents\my file.txt")"

Less or More in Windows?

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