Winix.Less 0.2.0-test4

less

Native terminal pager with ANSI colour passthrough, search, follow mode, and modern defaults.

less replacement with sane defaults on every platform. Passes ANSI escape codes through unchanged, so coloured output from tools like man, files, and treex renders correctly.

Install

Scoop (Windows)

scoop bucket add winix https://github.com/Yortw/winix
scoop install winix/less

Winget (Windows, stable releases)

winget install Winix.Less

.NET Tool (cross-platform)

dotnet tool install -g Winix.Less

Direct Download

Download native binaries from GitHub Releases.

Usage

less [options] [+command] [file ...]

Displays file content (or stdin) one screen at a time. When no file is given, reads from stdin. Multiple files are paged in sequence.

Examples

# Page a file
less somefile.txt

# Page piped input (colour passes through by default)
man timeit | less

# Show line numbers
less -N somefile.txt

# Chop long lines instead of wrapping
less -S somefile.txt

# Follow a growing file (like tail -f)
less +F logfile.log

# Jump to end of file on open
less +G somefile.txt

# Open with an initial search
less +/error logfile.log

# Force exit if output fits on one screen
less -F somefile.txt

Options

Key Bindings

LESS Environment Variable

The LESS environment variable controls default options:

• Unset or empty — Winix less uses modern defaults: FRX (quit-if-one-screen, raw colour, no-init). This gives sensible out-of-the-box behaviour without configuring anything.
• Set to a non-empty value — replaces the defaults entirely. The value is parsed as a list of options (e.g. LESS=-NiR). Set LESS= explicitly to an empty string to disable all defaults.

This matches the behaviour of traditional less implementations.

Exit Codes

Colour

• ANSI escape codes are passed through by default (-R is on unless NO_COLOR is set)
• --color forces colour on (overrides NO_COLOR)
• --no-color disables colour passthrough; raw escape sequences are shown as text
• Respects the NO_COLOR environment variable (no-color.org)

Part of Winix

less is part of the Winix CLI toolkit.