Show special characters in Unix while using less Command

Question

I would like to know how to view special characters while using  less  command   For instance I want to see the non-printable characters with a special notation   For instance in  vi  editor I use  set list on  to see the line termination characters represented by dollar     character   Similarly I would want to do this using  less  command   I referred Unix less manual  but to no avail

User · Accepted Answer

less will look in its environment to see if there is a variable named LESS

You can set LESS in one of your ~/.profile (.bash_rc, etc, etc) and then anytime you run less from the comand line, it will find the LESS.

Try adding this

export LESS="-CQaix4"

This is the setup I use, there are some behaviors embedded in that may confuse you, so you can find out about what all of these mean from the help function in less, just tap the 'h' key and nose around, or run less --help.

Edit:

I looked at the help, and noticed there is also an -r option

-r  -R  ....  --raw-control-chars  --RAW-CONTROL-CHARS
                Output "raw" control characters.

I agree that cat may be the most exact match to your stated needs.

cat -vet file | less

Will add '$' at end of each line and convert tab char to visual '^I'.

cat --help
   (edited)
    -e                       equivalent to -vE
    -E, --show-ends          display $ at end of each line
    -t                       equivalent to -vT
    -T, --show-tabs          display TAB characters as ^I
    -v, --show-nonprinting   use ^ and M- notation, except for LFD and TAB

I hope this helps.

User · Answer

Now  sometimes you already have less open  and you can t use cat on it   For example   you did a   less  and you can t just reopen a file  as that s actually a stream   If all you need is to identify end of line  one easy way is to search for the last character on the line        The search will highlight the last character  even if it is a blank  making it easy to identify it   That will only help with the end of line case   If you need other special characters  you can use the cat -vet solution above with marks and pipe    mark the top of the text you re interested in  ma go to the bottom of the text you re interested in and mark it  as well  mb go back to the mark a   a pipe from a to b through cat -vet and view the result in another less command   bcat -vet   less   This will open another less process  which shows the result of running cat -vet on the text that lies between marks a and b     If you want the whole thing  instead  do g  cat -vet   less  to go to the first line and filter all lines through cat   The advantage of this method over less options is that it does not mess with the output you see on the screen   One would think that eight years after this question was originally posted  less would have that feature     But I can t even see a feature request for it on https   github com gwsw less issues

User · Answer

For less use -u to display carriage returns   M  and backspaces   H   or -U to show the previous and tabs   I  for example     awk  BEGIN print  foo bbar tbaz r n      less -U  foo Hbar Ibaz M   END    Without the -U switch the output would be   fobar   baz   END    See man less for more exact description on the features

User · Answer

In the same spirit as https   stackoverflow com a 6943976 7154924       cat -A  -A  --show-all        equivalent to -vET -v  --show-nonprinting        use   and M- notation  except for LFD and TAB -E  --show-ends        display   at end of each line -T  --show-tabs        display TAB characters as  I   Alternatively  or at the same time  you can pipe to tr to substitute arbitrary characters to the desired ones for display  before piping to a pager like less if desired

User · Answer

You can do that with cat and that pipe the output to less   cat -e yourFile   less   This excerpt from man cat explains what -e means      -e     equivalent to -vE     -E  --show-ends           display   at end of each line     -v  --show-nonprinting           use   and M- notation  except for LFD and TAB

User · Answer

All special  nonprintable characters are displayed using   notation in less  However  line feed is actually printable  just make a new line   so not considered special  so you ll have problems replacing it  If you just want to see line endings  the easiest way might be  sed -e  s         less

[linux] Show special characters in Unix while using 'less' Command

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