A terminal pager, paging program or simply pager is a

computer program A computer program is a sequence or set of instructions in a programming language for a computer to Execution (computing), execute. It is one component of software, which also includes software documentation, documentation and other intangibl ...

used to view (but not modify) the contents of a

text file A text file (sometimes spelled textfile; an old alternative name is flat file) is a kind of computer file that is structured as a sequence of lines of electronic text. A text file exists stored as data within a computer file system. In ope ...

moving down the file one line or one screen at a time. Some, but not all, pagers allow movement up a file. A popular

cross-platform Within computing, cross-platform software (also called multi-platform software, platform-agnostic software, or platform-independent software) is computer software that is designed to work in several Computing platform, computing platforms. Some ...

terminal pager is more, which can move forwards and backwards in text files but cannot move backwards in

pipes Pipe(s), PIPE(S) or piping may refer to: Objects * Pipe (fluid conveyance), a hollow cylinder following certain dimension rules ** Piping, the use of pipes in industry * Smoking pipe ** Tobacco pipe * Half-pipe and quarter pipe, semi-circu ...

.manpage of more
/ref>

less Less or LESS may refer to: Computing * less (Unix), a Unix utility program * Less (style sheet language), a dynamic style sheet language * Large-Scale Scrum (LeSS), a product development framework that extends Scrum Other uses * -less, a priv ...

is a more advanced pager that allows movement forward and backward, and contains extra functions such as search.manpage of less
/ref> Some programs incorporate their own paging function, for example bash's tab completion function.

Examples

* more *

less 
Less or LESS may refer to:
 Computing
*  less (Unix), a Unix utility program
*  Less (style sheet language), a dynamic style sheet language
*  Large-Scale Scrum (LeSS), a product development framework that extends Scrum
 Other uses
*  -less, a priv ...

* pg * most * nano --view *

emacs 


Emacs (), originally named EMACS (an acronym for "Editor Macros"), is a family of text editors that are characterized by their extensibility. The manual for the most widely used variant, GNU Emacs, describes it as "the extensible, customizable, s ...
 -nw -e "(view-mode)"

* w3m

References

* * {{compu-prog-stub