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#1 2006-02-13 04:54:32

lydgate
Member
From: London, UK
Registered: 2006-01-10
Posts: 60

less pager and lesspipe.sh

One difference I noticed between slackware and arch is that slackware comes with a lesspipe.sh by default, whereas arch does not.  You can read about lesspipe.sh in "man less", basically what it does is automatically pipes any file you less through the appropriate processor.  For example, you can less any compressed file (gz, bz2 etc) and see the contents, or if it's simply text.bz2, you can read the text directly with less.  This is very useful.  Here's the contents of a slackware lesspipe.sh:

#!/bin/sh
#
# Copyright 1997, 1998, 1999, 2000 Patrick Volkerding, Moorhead, Minnesota USA
# Copyright 2001, 2002 Slackware Linux, Inc, Concord, CA, USA
# All rights reserved.
#
# Redistribution and use of this script, with or without modification, is
# permitted provided that the following conditions are met:
#
# 1. Redistributions of this script must retain the above copyright
#    notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer.
#
#  THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED BY THE AUTHOR ``AS IS'' AND ANY EXPRESS OR IMPLIED
#  WARRANTIES, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF
#  MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE ARE DISCLAIMED.  IN NO
#  EVENT SHALL THE AUTHOR BE LIABLE FOR ANY DIRECT, INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL,
#  SPECIAL, EXEMPLARY, OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES (INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO,
#  PROCUREMENT OF SUBSTITUTE GOODS OR SERVICES; LOSS OF USE, DATA, OR PROFITS;
#  OR BUSINESS INTERRUPTION) HOWEVER CAUSED AND ON ANY THEORY OF LIABILITY,
#  WHETHER IN CONTRACT, STRICT LIABILITY, OR TORT (INCLUDING NEGLIGENCE OR
#  OTHERWISE) ARISING IN ANY WAY OUT OF THE USE OF THIS SOFTWARE, EVEN IF
#  ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGE.
#

# This is a preprocessor for 'less'.  It is used when this environment
# variable is set:   LESSOPEN="|lesspipe.sh %s"

lesspipe() {
  case "$1" in
  *.tar) tar tvvf "$1" 2>/dev/null ;; # View contents of .tar and .tgz files
  *.tgz) tar tzvvf "$1" 2>/dev/null ;;
  *.tar.gz) tar tzvvf "$1" 2>/dev/null ;;
  *.tar.Z) tar tzvvf "$1" 2>/dev/null ;;
  *.tar.z) tar tzvvf "$1" 2>/dev/null ;;
  *.tar.bz2) tar tjvvf "$1" 2>/dev/null ;;
  *.Z) gzip -dc "$1" 2>/dev/null ;; # View compressed files correctly
  *.z) gzip -dc "$1" 2>/dev/null ;;
  *.zip) unzip -l "$1" 2>/dev/null ;;
  *.rpm) rpm -qpvl "$1" 2>/dev/null ;;
  *.1|*.2|*.3|*.4|*.5|*.6|*.7|*.8|*.9|*.n|*.man) # *roff src?
    if file -L "$1" | grep roff 1> /dev/null ; then
      nroff -S -mandoc "$1"
    fi ;;
  *.1.gz|*.2.gz|*.3.gz|*.4.gz|*.5.gz|*.6.gz|*.7.gz|*.8.gz|*.9.gz|*.n.gz|*.man.gz) # compressed *roff src?
    if gzip -dc "$1" | file - | grep roff 1> /dev/null ; then
      gzip -dc "$1" | nroff -S -mandoc -
    fi ;;
  *.1.bz2|*.2.bz2|*.3.bz2|*.4.bz2|*.5.bz2|*.6.bz2|*.7.bz2|*.8.bz2|*.9.bz2|*.n.bz2|*.man.bz2) # compressed *roff src?
    if bzip2 -dc "$1" | file - | grep roff 1> /dev/null ; then
      bzip2 -dc "$1" | nroff -S -mandoc -
    fi ;;
  *.gz) gzip -dc "$1"  2>/dev/null ;;
  *.bz2) bzip2 -dc "$1" 2>/dev/null ;;
#  *) FILE=`file -L "$1"` ; # Check to see if binary, if so -- view with 'strings'
#    FILE1=`echo $FILE | cut -d ' ' -f 2`
#    FILE2=`echo $FILE | cut -d ' ' -f 3`
#    if [ "$FILE1" = "Linux/i386" -o "$FILE2" = "Linux/i386" 
#         -o "$FILE1" = "ELF" -o "$FILE2" = "ELF" ]; then
#      strings "$1"
#    fi ;;
  esac
}

lesspipe "$1"

Simply put this file into /usr/bin/lesspipe.sh, and then export LESSOPEN="|lesspipe.sh %s" somewhere (~/.bashrc for example).

Now you can less compressed files.  I'm not sure if there's a separate package that provides this or what, but I think this would be a good feature to add into Arch's less package, or at least people should know about this . . .  Please tell me if I just somehow missed this feature in Arch.

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#2 2006-05-18 20:20:08

lupylucke
Member
Registered: 2006-05-18
Posts: 24

Re: less pager and lesspipe.sh

Yes, I missed it!
It wasn't difficult to add it ('just copied the script from my slackware distro), but I certainly would appreciate if it is included by default.

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#3 2006-05-19 11:52:45

patroclo7
Member
From: Bassano del Grappa, ITALY
Registered: 2006-01-11
Posts: 915

Re: less pager and lesspipe.sh

Very interesting.


Mortuus in anima, curam gero cutis

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#4 2006-05-19 14:02:19

brain0
Developer
From: Aachen - Germany
Registered: 2005-01-03
Posts: 1,382

Re: less pager and lesspipe.sh

File a feature request on the bugtracker if you want to it to be included.

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