On Apache
Under GNU General Public License
2025-10-26 20:52 @216.73.216.108 CrawledBy Mozilla/5.0 AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko; compatible; ClaudeBot/1.0; +claudebot@anthropic.com)
LESSKEY(1) General Commands Manual LESSKEY(1)
NAME
lesskey - specify key bindings for less
SYNOPSIS (deprecated)
lesskey [-o output] [--] [input]
lesskey [--output=output] [--] [input]
lesskey -V
lesskey --version
SCOPE
This document describes the format of the lesskey source file, which is used by less ver-
sion 582 and later. In previous versions of less, a separate program called lesskey was
used to compile the lesskey source file into a format understood by less. This compila-
tion step is no longer required and the lesskey program is therefore deprecated although
the file format remains supported by less itself.
FILE FORMAT
The input file consists of one or more sections. Each section starts with a line that
identifies the type of section. Possible sections are:
#command
Defines new command keys.
#line-edit
Defines new line-editing keys.
#env Defines environment variables.
Blank lines and lines which start with a pound sign (#) are ignored, except for the spe-
cial section header lines.
COMMAND SECTION
The command section begins with the line
#command
If the command section is the first section in the file, this line may be omitted. The
command section consists of lines of the form:
string <whitespace> action [extra-string] <newline>
Whitespace is any sequence of one or more spaces and/or tabs. The string is the command
key(s) which invoke the action. The string may be a single command key, or a sequence of
up to 15 keys. The action is the name of the less action, from the list below. The char-
acters in the string may appear literally, or be prefixed by a caret to indicate a control
key. A backslash followed by one to three octal digits may be used to specify a character
by its octal value. A backslash followed by certain characters specifies input characters
as follows:
\b BACKSPACE
\e ESCAPE
\n NEWLINE
\r RETURN
\t TAB
\ku UP ARROW
\kd DOWN ARROW
\kr RIGHT ARROW
\kl LEFT ARROW
\kU PAGE UP
\kD PAGE DOWN
\kh HOME
\ke END
\kx DELETE
A backslash followed by any other character indicates that character is to be taken liter-
ally. Characters which must be preceded by backslash include caret, space, tab and the
backslash itself.
An action may be followed by an "extra" string. When such a command is entered while run-
ning less, the action is performed, and then the extra string is parsed, just as if it
were typed in to less. This feature can be used in certain cases to extend the function-
ality of a command. For example, see the "{" and ":t" commands in the example below. The
extra string has a special meaning for the "quit" action: when less quits, the first char-
acter of the extra string is used as its exit status.
EXAMPLE
The following input file describes the set of default command keys used by less:
#command
\r forw-line
\n forw-line
e forw-line
j forw-line
\kd forw-line
^E forw-line
^N forw-line
k back-line
y back-line
^Y back-line
^K back-line
^P back-line
J forw-line-force
K back-line-force
Y back-line-force
d forw-scroll
^D forw-scroll
u back-scroll
^U back-scroll
\40 forw-screen
f forw-screen
^F forw-screen
^V forw-screen
\kD forw-screen
b back-screen
^B back-screen
\ev back-screen
\kU back-screen
z forw-window
w back-window
\e\40 forw-screen-force
F forw-forever
\eF forw-until-hilite
R repaint-flush
r repaint
^R repaint
^L repaint
\eu undo-hilite
\eU clear-search
g goto-line
\kh goto-line
< goto-line
\e< goto-line
p percent
% percent
\e[ left-scroll
\e] right-scroll
\e( left-scroll
\e) right-scroll
\kl left-scroll
\kr right-scroll
\e{ no-scroll
\e} end-scroll
{ forw-bracket {}
} back-bracket {}
( forw-bracket ()
) back-bracket ()
[ forw-bracket []
] back-bracket []
\e^F forw-bracket
\e^B back-bracket
G goto-end
\e> goto-end
> goto-end
\ke goto-end
\eG goto-end-buffered
= status
^G status
:f status
/ forw-search
? back-search
\e/ forw-search *
\e? back-search *
n repeat-search
\en repeat-search-all
N reverse-search
\eN reverse-search-all
& filter
m set-mark
M set-mark-bottom
\em clear-mark
' goto-mark
^X^X goto-mark
E examine
:e examine
^X^V examine
:n next-file
:p prev-file
t next-tag
T prev-tag
:x index-file
:d remove-file
- toggle-option
:t toggle-option t
s toggle-option o
_ display-option
| pipe
v visual
! shell
+ firstcmd
H help
h help
V version
0 digit
1 digit
2 digit
3 digit
4 digit
5 digit
6 digit
7 digit
8 digit
9 digit
q quit
Q quit
:q quit
:Q quit
ZZ quit
PRECEDENCE
Commands specified by lesskey take precedence over the default commands. A default com-
mand key may be disabled by including it in the input file with the action "invalid". Al-
ternatively, a key may be defined to do nothing by using the action "noaction". "noac-
tion" is similar to "invalid", but less will give an error beep for an "invalid" command,
but not for a "noaction" command. In addition, ALL default commands may be disabled by
adding this control line to the input file:
#stop
This will cause all default commands to be ignored. The #stop line should be the last
line in that section of the file.
Be aware that #stop can be dangerous. Since all default commands are disabled, you must
provide sufficient commands before the #stop line to enable all necessary actions. For
example, failure to provide a "quit" command can lead to frustration.
LINE EDITING SECTION
The line-editing section begins with the line:
#line-edit
This section specifies new key bindings for the line editing commands, in a manner similar
to the way key bindings for ordinary commands are specified in the #command section. The
line-editing section consists of a list of keys and actions, one per line as in the exam-
ple below.
EXAMPLE
The following input file describes the set of default line-editing keys used by less:
#line-edit
\t forw-complete
\17 back-complete
\e\t back-complete
^L expand
^V literal
^A literal
\el right
\kr right
\eh left
\kl left
\eb word-left
\e\kl word-left
\ew word-right
\e\kr word-right
\ei insert
\ex delete
\kx delete
\eX word-delete
\ekx word-delete
\e\b word-backspace
\e0 home
\kh home
\e$ end
\ke end
\ek up
\ku up
\ej down
^G abort
LESS ENVIRONMENT VARIABLES
The environment variable section begins with the line
#env
Following this line is a list of environment variable assignments. Each line consists of
an environment variable name, an equals sign (=) and the value to be assigned to the envi-
ronment variable. White space before and after the equals sign is ignored. Variables as-
signed in this way are visible only to less. If a variable is specified in the system en-
vironment and also in a lesskey file, the value in the lesskey file takes precedence. Al-
though the lesskey file can be used to override variables set in the environment, the main
purpose of assigning variables in the lesskey file is simply to have all less configura-
tion information stored in one file.
EXAMPLE
The following input file sets the -i option whenever less is run, and specifies the char-
acter set to be "latin1":
#env
LESS = -i
LESSCHARSET = latin1
SEE ALSO
less(1)
WARNINGS
On MS-DOS and OS/2 systems, certain keys send a sequence of characters which start with a
NUL character (0). This NUL character should be represented as \340 in a lesskey file.
COPYRIGHT
Copyright (C) 1984-2021 Mark Nudelman
less is part of the GNU project and is free software. You can redistribute it and/or mod-
ify it under the terms of either (1) the GNU General Public License as published by the
Free Software Foundation; or (2) the Less License. See the file README in the less dis-
tribution for more details regarding redistribution. You should have received a copy of
the GNU General Public License along with the source for less; see the file COPYING. If
not, write to the Free Software Foundation, 59 Temple Place, Suite 330, Boston, MA
02111-1307, USA. You should also have received a copy of the Less License; see the file
LICENSE.
less is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without
even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the
GNU General Public License for more details.
AUTHOR
Mark Nudelman
Report bugs at https://github.com/gwsw/less/issues.
Version 590: 03 Jun 2021 LESSKEY(1)
Generated by $Id: phpMan.php,v 4.55 2007/09/05 04:42:51 chedong Exp $ Author: Che Dong
On Apache
Under GNU General Public License
2025-10-26 20:52 @216.73.216.108 CrawledBy Mozilla/5.0 AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko; compatible; ClaudeBot/1.0; +claudebot@anthropic.com)