Constantly switching between Linux and FreeBSD I keep bumping into this. When I do:
less something.tgz
Linux systems(well… Ubuntu to be precise) show me a list of files, which is what I generally want, while FreeBSD shows a binary contents.
How is this behavior(showing file contents) is accomplished on linux and is it possible to replicate it on FreeBSD systems?
Best Answer
Have a look at the man page of
lesspipe(orlessopen) on an Ubuntu box.With the Debian/Ubuntu version, all you have to do is to add
to your
.bashrc.On FreeBSD you find the
lesspipe.shscript in a separate port named lesspipe, which uses a version from sourceforge (that doesn't have the convenient setup above, though -- the man page of less has more info).Here is a different version of the script I found on freshmeat: lesspipe, an addon for the browser less