-F option broken

Bug #67381 reported by Aneesh Kumar K.V
16
This bug affects 3 people
Affects Status Importance Assigned to Milestone
less (Debian)
Confirmed
Unknown
less (Ubuntu)
Triaged
Medium
Unassigned

Bug Description

cat /tmp/a | less -F
or
echo 1 | less -F

doesn't show any output if the content of the file is less than one page.

Revision history for this message
Aneesh Kumar K.V (aneesh-kumar) wrote :
Revision history for this message
Aneesh Kumar K.V (aneesh-kumar) wrote :

Looking further i found that it always "redraw" the screen up on quit from less. I am not sure whether redraw is the exact word to describe it though. BTW any idea how to disable it ?

Revision history for this message
Aneesh Kumar K.V (aneesh-kumar) wrote :

The work around is to use -X option. I guess -F should imply -X

Revision history for this message
Daniel Hahler (blueyed) wrote :

Confirming with less 418. According to the linked mailing list above, it does not affect Ubuntu only.

Changed in less:
importance: Undecided → Medium
status: New → Triaged
description: updated
Changed in less:
status: Unknown → Confirmed
Revision history for this message
Sense Egbert Hofstede (sense) wrote :

http://www.greenwoodsoftware.com/less/bugs.html says "The -F option only exits if the entire file can be displayed on one screen."
So it seems that it's desired behaviour.

Revision history for this message
jimav (james-avera) wrote :

The -E options is also affected by this bug.

This is not desired behavior. less should exit after displaying the content (i.e. not wait for the user to type 'q').

To post a comment you must log in.
This report contains Public information  
Everyone can see this information.

Other bug subscribers

Remote bug watches

Bug watches keep track of this bug in other bug trackers.