til/unix/skip-paging-if-output-fits-on-screen-with-less.md

Skip Paging If Output Fits On Screen With Less

The less command can be used to display a file or the output of a command. It is sometimes referred to as a pager because it paginates text that won't fit onto a single screen.

$ ls | less

This will list the files for the current directory with less.

By default it will even display a small amount of text output within the pager. If you want less to output text that fits onto a single screen directly to the terminal, you can pass the -F and -X flags.

$ ls | less -FX

The -F flag tells less to exit if the output fits onto a single screen. The -X tells less to skip screen clearing.

This is handy if you want the output of a command to show up in your shell history.

See man less for more details.