428

139

When I read a file in Linux with the command less or more, how can I get the content in colors?

Open the way

Posted 2010-03-09T10:44:32.413

Reputation: 6 061

This seems related: http://superuser.com/questions/36022/less-and-grep-color - does it help?

– Jonik – 2010-03-09T13:40:00.107

7The title of this question is very misleading. Many people landing on this page expect a solution to the coloring issue you will get when piping a command with colored output to less: colors are lost. (The answers to that ”piping issue“ involve less -R, unbuffer etc.) But the actual question refers to opening a file! — The ambiguity lies primarily in the question's title, but even besides that, IMHO the question is still too broad: ”read a file“ could refer to any file (probably plain text). (well, ”get the content in colors“ is probably referring to syntax highlighting.) – myrdd – 2018-12-03T23:05:34.447

I need to correct myself, only 3 (or 4) of 14 answers are missing the OP's actual question: the answers by ChristopheD, Puneet and Onlyjob; and maybe jbbr. Still, two of those answers are part of the three highest-voted ones.

– myrdd – 2018-12-03T23:38:08.780

@myrdd "syntax highlighting" is the relevant term then... (It asks about showing colors, not adding colors?) less -R will work on files as well, e.g. ls --color=always > /tmp/file && less -R /tmp/file – Gert van den Berg – 2019-07-05T10:20:08.963

@GertvandenBerg I think the OP meant ”how to get syntax highlighting in less or more when the file opened does NOT contain any escape codes“. But I only think he meant that, I don't know it. — By the way, I disagree with you interpretation of the question. The question says ”When I read a file […]“, and by ”file“ I'm quite sure the OP meant a typical plaintext file, or a ”normal“ file. Does a ”typical“ plaintext file (or ”normal“ file) contain escape characters, i.e., coloring? No. So IMHO the question is about ”adding“ colors (or syntax highlighting). – myrdd – 2019-07-05T14:30:31.980

1@myrdd It might make most sense for the question to be closed as "unclear what is being asked" since questions asking any of the two would likely get marked as duplicates of this... (And answers for any of the two can get downvoted based on how the voter interprets it...) (My use case was a log file that (annoyingly) has color escape codes in it) – Gert van den Berg – 2019-07-07T12:36:20.593

@GertvandenBerg I agree. I already have been voting for closing the question. – myrdd – 2019-07-07T19:21:43.350

Answers

156

(update on 2020)

The faster way would be using less -R ref. https://superuser.com/a/117842/34893

You can utilize the power of pygmentize with less - automatically! (No need to pipe by hand.)

Install pygments with your package manager or pip (possibly called python-pygments) or get it here http://pygments.org/download/.

Write a file ~/.lessfilter

#!/bin/sh
case "$1" in
    *.awk|*.groff|*.java|*.js|*.m4|*.php|*.pl|*.pm|*.pod|*.sh|\
    *.ad[asb]|*.asm|*.inc|*.[ch]|*.[ch]pp|*.[ch]xx|*.cc|*.hh|\
    *.lsp|*.l|*.pas|*.p|*.xml|*.xps|*.xsl|*.axp|*.ppd|*.pov|\
    *.diff|*.patch|*.py|*.rb|*.sql|*.ebuild|*.eclass)
        pygmentize -f 256 "$1";;

    .bashrc|.bash_aliases|.bash_environment)
        pygmentize -f 256 -l sh "$1";;

    *)
        if grep -q "#\!/bin/bash" "$1" 2> /dev/null; then
            pygmentize -f 256 -l sh "$1"
        else
            exit 1
        fi
esac

exit 0

In your .bashrc add

export LESS='-R'
export LESSOPEN='|~/.lessfilter %s'

Also, you need to make ~/.lessfilter executable by running

chmod u+x ~/.lessfilter

Tested on Debian.

You get the idea. This can of course be improved further, accepting more extensions or parsing the shebang for other interpreters than bash. See some of the other answers for that.

The idea came from an old blog post from the makers of Pygments, but the original post doesn't exist anymore.

Dario Seidl

Posted 2010-03-09T10:44:32.413

Reputation: 2 409

7@puk you can do something like ls --color=always -l | less -R. Obviously a lot to type but you could alias it to something like ll. That is if you don't want to use any extra libraries. – PhilT – 2014-07-23T16:17:57.523

The -g flag on pygmentize will solve the problem of "Error: no lexer for filename" for filetypes not included, as described here http://askubuntu.com/a/392017/115392

– Pan Chrono – 2014-09-02T12:37:24.940

2added @SergiyByelozyorov's comment into the answer. – andrybak – 2015-01-18T12:54:06.430

Just in case anyone is interested, I wrote a pair of scripts that serves a very similar purpose (pygmentize-addons). They are wrappers around pygmentize, used to view syntax highlighted code for files or scripts on PATH via stdout, less, or PNG image. I use it all the time to examine source code of files and installed scripts.

– Six – 2015-06-01T12:59:39.387

dont forget to sudo aptitude install python-pygments – arod – 2015-07-09T19:03:08.980

is there an easy way to obtain more saturated colors on the default color scheme (php) to view in console? – arod – 2015-07-10T00:46:18.797

2My edit was rejected so I guess I'll post it as a comment instead: Don't test the exit codes of commands indirectly. You can use if grep -q "#\!/bin/bash" "$1" (the -q suppresses standard output). You may want to redirect standard error with 2>/dev/null. – Tom Fenech – 2015-10-23T13:16:38.333

@TomFenech good point, I edited the answer accordingly. – Dario Seidl – 2018-11-11T15:43:25.403

It took me a long time to troubleshoot back to this, after noticing less could no longer decompress .gz,bz2,xz,etc. files on the fly. How to have both color and prior LESSPIPE features? – Marcos – 2019-01-14T13:54:44.190

1To get a list of all unique file extensions supported by your currently installed pygmentize version, in a format suitable for pasting into this .lessfilter script, run pygmentize -L | grep -o "(filenames .*)" | sed -E "s,$filenames (.*)$,\1,gm;s/, /\n/g" | sort -u | tr "\n" "|". Note that on certain Linuxes, setting LESSOPEN may not be necessary because it is already setup to use lesspipe which detects the .lessfilter file already (run echo $LESSOPEN to check). – Bart – 2019-05-17T09:38:31.877

If you want to have coloring of the source code files, you also need to make ~/.lessfilter executable by running chmod u+x ~/.lessfilter. You also need to have pygmentize (http://pygments.org/download/) installed.

– Sergiy Belozorov – 2012-12-18T11:07:12.503

Can anyone confirm that this works as it has no effect for me when I execute a command like ls -l | less – puk – 2013-10-30T13:59:25.547

Any idea how to chain this with Vladimir Linek's lessopen.sh?? it is setup with this form: LESSOPEN="lessopen.sh %s" – Gregory – 2013-12-23T05:12:22.357

520

Try the following:

less -R

from man less:

-r or --raw-control-chars

Causes "raw" control characters to be displayed. (...)

-R or --RAW-CONTROL-CHARS

Like -r, but only ANSI "color" escape sequences are output in "raw" form. (...)

ChristopheD

Posted 2010-03-09T10:44:32.413

Reputation: 5 624

it does not work

there is some conf file for "less" like for vim there is .vimrc ? – Open the way – 2010-03-09T10:59:02.137

Very useful combined with unbuffer – Claudiu – 2015-06-22T23:09:47.043

18You can also type -R when you already opened less to achieve this. – Scz – 2016-09-01T07:56:57.770

3IMHO this should actually be the accepted answer, it is much more simple – Willian Mitsuda – 2017-04-05T07:14:09.643

As Nitrodist said this is useful only if tte escape codes for coloring are present. So if you want the git diff's output in less, you have to use git diff --color | less -R – Rohit Walavalkar – 2018-02-19T12:16:02.993

2This worked for me with grep only when I included the --color=always option in grep.: grep --color=always foo myfile.txt | less -R – Dannid – 2019-01-14T17:31:34.153

cool and should-be accepted one to me – Nam G VU – 2020-01-15T03:56:37.627

17This is useful when the file itself contains the escape codes that will need to be displayed. – Nitrodist – 2011-12-16T21:16:45.103

interesting, a test for less file contains escape characters: script ls --color exit less -R typedscript – LiuYan 刘研 – 2013-03-12T08:02:20.180

1I used to know about less -r but searching in the file using "/" kept bringing up the wrong lines. -R seems to do a better job. Thanks for the tip. – Amos Shapira – 2013-08-06T00:28:56.507

54It should be noted that most programs use the isatty(2) syscall to check whether their standard output is a terminal, and usually disable colorized output if it is not. For any pipe to less, isatty will return 0. To check whether this works, try echo -e '\x1b[32;1mtest\x1b[m' | less -r – mic_e – 2013-09-24T22:53:35.503

Using the lower case '-r' for me means that the ^M characters from windows files are not shown. I like this because I'm not bothered about line endings and it makes the rest of the output a bit clearer. – J.Churchill – 2013-09-30T08:48:20.310

11This answer does not excel in the actually does something test. – Michael Wolf – 2014-05-09T22:24:18.463

141

I got the answer in another post: Less and Grep: Getting colored results when using a pipe from grep to less

When you simply run grep --color it implies grep --color=auto which detects whether the output is a terminal and if so enables colors. However, when it detects a pipe it disables coloring. The following command:
grep --color=always "search string" * | less -R
Will always enable coloring and override the automatic detection, and you will get the color highlighting in less.

Warning: Don't put --color=always as an alias, it break things sometimes. That's why there is an --color=auto option.

Puneet

Posted 2010-03-09T10:44:32.413

Reputation: 1 411

2Is there anyway to let grep know just pipe less -R command and then just do coloring? So, we don't have to put --color=always and less -R all the time. – A-letubby – 2015-02-27T07:50:24.577

1This is by far the simplest working answer. Thanks! – Danny Staple – 2015-10-03T11:16:16.100

1This also works when you need to pipe git diff to less. Doing just this: git diff | less won't show you any colors. You need to do this instead: git diff --colors=always | less or git diff --colors=always some_file | less. (I'm using cygwin on Windows 10, by the way.) – CSCH – 2018-08-27T20:17:32.883

6Nice, thanks. Except that I need to use -R as an option to less, as well. – naught101 – 2012-05-08T06:41:10.183

10I believe grep -R is for specifying recursive search. less -R is necessary for less to correctly spit the colors back out. grep --color=always [grep cmds] | less -R works for me on OS X 10.7.3! – Steven Lu – 2012-05-09T13:56:46.350

@naught101 @Steven Lu Edited in, though it seems that some people may not need to use less -R (according to the author of the original post, anyway). – jtpereyda – 2013-10-22T17:17:02.740

Use view instead of less. It opens the file with vim in readonly mode.

It's practically a coloured less: a pager where you can search with / (and more). The only drawback is that you can't exit with q but you need :q

Also, you get the same colouring as vim (since you're in fact using vim).

Riccardo Galli

Posted 2010-03-09T10:44:32.413

Reputation: 483

1I upvoted (I didn't know about view) but another downside is that j/k/up/down don't instantly scroll, since there is a cursor. – Tyler Collier – 2015-03-01T17:38:46.897

7Note that you may need to add view - when piping – user45909 – 2015-03-02T00:54:48.637

7vim is an editor, which loads the complete file into memory, whereas less is a pager, loading the file only partially into memory. You will know the difference with huge files. – sjas – 2016-07-20T12:13:45.540

1@RiccardoGalli - Cool idea, but i would agree about the performance concern, it's not instantaneous. When viewing huge logs or greps, especially over-the-line (SSH), less is faster since it's not dumping the entire output line by line via "inserts" into vim. Also, you can search with less using '/'. Additionally it has a "tail" mode using shift-F which is handy. – dhaupin – 2016-09-29T17:49:15.813

gmic -h | view starts to execute vim commands. It is not safe. gmic -h | view - doesn't color on Ubuntu 18.10, so downvoting. – anatoly techtonik – 2018-09-24T11:39:35.380

at least on debian, view is a Debian Alternative, that is, /usr/bin/view points to /etc/alternatives/view. Try sudo update-alternatives --config view.

– myrdd – 2018-12-03T23:19:03.017

ls --color=always > /tmp/file && view /tmp/file certainly does not work.... It shows the escape codes instead of rendering them. – Gert van den Berg – 2019-07-05T10:24:00.017

How about the performance of big files? Vim syntax highlighting is know to be slow on huge files. – pihentagy – 2014-02-20T10:28:14.197

I don't know what's your value for 'big', but opening a ~10000 lines file is instantaneous, search inside included. – Riccardo Galli – 2014-02-20T11:50:50.483

To tell less to show colors call it with -R:

less -R

Unfortunately some programs detect that their stdout is not a terminal and disable colors - e.g pacman (Arch Linux package manager).

In those cases its possible to use unbuffer:

unbuffer <command> | less -R

Example using pacman

unbuffer pacman -Ss firefox | less -R

The unbuffer command is usually part of the package expect (Arch Linux, Debian/Ubuntu) or expect-dev (legacy versions of Debian/Ubuntu).

To answer the question for completeness:

As others already answered, pygmentize is great for colorizing source code. It does not require unbuffer. Easiest call:

pygmentize someSource.cpp | less -R

jbbr

Posted 2010-03-09T10:44:32.413

Reputation: 181

2To use unbuffer on Ubuntu, sudo apt install expect – wisbucky – 2018-12-04T18:37:41.653

This answer needs more upvotes. – Thomas Dignan – 2019-04-19T14:26:28.740

I was trying to pipe dmesg output to check on boot errors but the colours didn't work unless I use unbuffer, which was confusing the heck out of me: unbuffer dmesg | less -R works as expected. – pbhj – 2019-05-12T09:49:58.253

on macOS brew install expect gets you the necessary unbuffer command. – luckman212 – 2019-10-19T20:30:48.997

pygmentize supports the -g option to automatically guess the lexer to be used which is useful for files read from STDIN without checking any extension type.

Using that, you only need to set the following 2 exports in your .bashrc without any additional scripts:

export LESS='-R'
export LESSOPEN='|pygmentize -g %s'

Tuxdude

Posted 2010-03-09T10:44:32.413

Reputation: 609

4Concise and effective. I prefer defining an alias, because sometimes less is better. So: alias lesc='LESS="-R" LESSOPEN="|pygmentize -g %s" less' – Tiago – 2014-04-28T18:27:09.240

You didn't say what this color should mean, e.g. what should the colors be for a text file?

If what you want is syntax highlighting for source code, you need a source code highlighter. I sometimes use pygmentize like this

pygmentize file.cpp | less

pygmentize file.cpp | more

There are other highlighters around.

This is pretty fast. If you don't mind firing up vim there is a read-only mode that can give you syntax highlighting if you have it in vim.

view file.cpp

or alternatively see churnd's answer.

Benjamin Bannier

Posted 2010-03-09T10:44:32.413

Reputation: 13 999

This is yet another pygments-based answer, with several major improvements:

does not break lesspipe or lessfile filters
works with multiple inputs to less
correctly parses the script type from the shebang header
works for all 434 file types lexable by Pygments
color scheme is parameterized as an environment variable

Install Pygments and Gawk

sudo apt-get install python-pygments python3-pygments gawk

Set Environment Variables

Check whether lesspipe or lessfile is already enabled:

echo $LESSOPEN

If you don't see either program referenced there, ensure that lesspipe is installed (most distros come with it).

Add the following to ~/.bashrc:

# sets LESSOPEN and LESSCLOSE variables
eval "$(SHELL=/bin/sh lesspipe)"

# interpret color characters
export LESS='-R'

# to list available styles: `pygmentize -L styles`
export PYGMENTIZE_STYLE='paraiso-dark'

# optional
alias ls='ls --color=always'
alias grep='grep --color=always'

If you don't want lesspipe, replace the eval statement with:

export LESSOPEN='|~/.lessfilter %s'

Create `~/.lessfilter`

Add the following code and make the file executable: chmod u+x ~/.lessfilter

#!/bin/bash
for path in "$@"; do
    # match by known filenames
    filename=$(basename "$path")
    case "$filename" in
        .bashrc|bash.bashrc|.bash_aliases|.bash_environment|.bash_profile|\
        .bash_login|.bash_logout|.profile|.zshrc|.zprofile|.zshrc|.zlogin|\
        .zlogout|zshrc|zprofile|zshrc|zlogin|zlogout|.cshrc|.cshdirs|\
        csh.cshrc|csh.login|csh.logout|.tcshrc|.kshrc|ksh.kshrc)
            # shell lexer
            pygmentize -f 256 -O style=$PYGMENTIZE_STYLE -l sh "$path"
            ;;
        .htaccess|apache.conf|apache2.conf|Dockerfile|Kconfig|external.in*|\
        standard-modules.in|nginx.conf|pacman.conf|squid.conf|termcap|\
        termcap.src|terminfo|terminfo.src|control|sources.list|CMakeLists.txt|\
        Makefile|makefile|Makefile.*|GNUmakefile|SConstruct|SConscript|\
        .Rhistory|.Rprofile|.Renviron|Rakefile|Gemfile|PKGBUILD|autohandler|\
        dhandler|autodelegate|.vimrc|.exrc|.gvimrc|vimrc|exrc|gvimrc|todo.txt)
            # filename recognized
            pygmentize -f 256 -O style=$PYGMENTIZE_STYLE "$path"
            ;;
        *)
            ext=$([[ "$filename" = *.* ]] && echo ".${filename##*.}" || echo '')
            case "$ext" in
                .as|.mxml|.bc|.g|.gd|.gi|.gap|.nb|.cdf|.nbp|.ma|.mu|.at|.run|\
                .apl|.adl|.adls|.adlf|.adlx|.cadl|.odin|.c-objdump|.s|\
                .cpp-objdump|.c++-objdump|.cxx-objdump|.d-objdump|.S|.hsail|\
                .ll|.asm|.ASM|.objdump-intel|.objdump|.tasm|.au3|.ahk|.ahkl|\
                .bb|.decls|.bmx|.bas|.monkey|.BAS|.bst|.bib|.abap|.ABAP|.cbl|\
                .CBL|.cob|.COB|.cpy|.CPY|.gdc|.maql|.p|.cls|.c|.h|.idc|.cpp|\
                .hpp|.c++|.h++|.cc|.hh|.cxx|.hxx|.C|.H|.cp|.CPP|.ino|.clay|\
                .cu|.cuh|.ec|.eh|.mq4|.mq5|.mqh|.nc|.pike|.pmod|.swg|.i|.vala|\
                .vapi|.capnp|.chpl|.icl|.dcl|.cf|.docker|.ini|.cfg|.inf|\
                .pc|.properties|.reg|.tf|.pypylog|.cr|.csd|.orc|.sco|.css|\
                .less|.sass|.scss|.croc|.d|.di|.smali|.jsonld|.json|.yaml|\
                .yml|.dpatch|.darcspatch|.diff|.patch|.wdiff|.boo|.aspx|.asax|\
                .ascx|.ashx|.asmx|.axd|.cs|.fs|.fsi|.n|.vb|.als|.bro|.crmsh|\
                .pcmk|.msc|.pan|.proto|.pp|.rsl|.sbl|.thrift|.rpf|\
                .dylan-console|.dylan|.dyl|.intr|.lid|.hdp|.ecl|.e|.elm|.ex|\
                .exs|.erl|.hrl|.es|.escript|.erl-sh|.aheui|.befunge|.bf|.b|\
                .camkes|.idl4|.cdl|.cw|.factor|.fan|.flx|.flxh|.frt|.f|.F|\
                .f03|.f90|.F03|.F90|.PRG|.prg|.go|.abnf|.bnf|.jsgf|.cyp|\
                .cypher|.asy|.vert|.frag|.geo|.plot|.plt|.ps|.eps|.pov|.inc|\
                .agda|.cry|.hs|.idr|.kk|.kki|.lagda|.lcry|.lhs|.lidr|.hx|\
                .hxsl|.hxml|.sv|.svh|.v|.vhdl|.vhd|.dtd|.haml|.html|.htm|\
                .xhtml|.xslt|.pug|.jade|.scaml|.xml|.xsl|.rss|.xsd|.wsdl|\
                .wsf|.xpl|.pro|.ipf|.nsi|.nsh|.spec|.i6t|.ni|.i7x|.t|.io|\
                .ijs|.coffee|.dart|.eg|.js|.jsm|.juttle|.kal|.lasso|\
                .lasso[89]|.ls|.mask|.j|.ts|.tsx|.jl|.aj|.ceylon|.clj|\
                .cljs|.golo|.gs|.gsx|.gsp|.vark|.gst|.groovy|.gradle|.ik|\
                .java|.kt|.pig|.scala|.xtend|.cpsa|.cl|.lisp|.el|.hy|.lsp|.nl|\
                .kif|.rkt|.rktd|.rktl|.scm|.ss|.shen|.xtm|.cmake|.mak|.mk|\
                .[1234567]|.man|.md|.css.in|.js.in|.xul.in|.rst|.rest|.tex|\
                .aux|.toc|.m|.sci|.sce|.tst|.ml|.mli|.mll|.mly|.opa|.sml|.sig|\
                .fun|.bug|.jag|.mo|.stan|.def|.mod|.mt|.ncl|.nim|.nimrod|.nit|\
                .nix|.cps|.x|.xi|.xm|.xmi|.mm|.swift|.ooc|.psi|.psl|.G|.ebnf|\
                .rl|.treetop|.tt|.adb|.ads|.ada|.pas|.dpr|.pwn|.sp|.pl|.pm|\
                .nqp|.p6|.6pl|.p6l|.pl6|.6pm|.p6m|.pm6|.php|.php[345]|.zep|\
                .praat|.proc|.psc|.lgt|.logtalk|.prolog|.pyx|.pxd|.pxi|.dg|\
                .py3tb|.py|.pyw|.sc|.tac|.sage|.pytb|.qvto|.Rout|.Rd|.R|.rq|\
                .sparql|.ttl|.r|.r3|.reb|.red|.reds|.txt|.rnc|.graph|\
                .instances|.robot|.fy|.fancypack|.rb|.rbw|.rake|.gemspec|\
                .rbx|.duby|.rs|.rs.in|.SAS|.sas|.applescript|.chai|.ezt|\
                .mac|.hyb|.jcl|.lsl|.lua|.wlua|.moo|.moon|.rexx|.rex|.rx|\
                .arexx|.sh|.ksh|.bash|.ebuild|.eclass|.exheres-0|.exlib|.zsh|\
                .sh-session|.shell-session|.bat|.cmd|.fish|.load|.ps1|.psm1|\
                .tcsh|.csh|.ns2|.st|.smv|.snobol|.rql|.sql|.sqlite3-console|\
                .do|.ado|.scd|.tcl|.rvt|.ng2|.tmpl|.spt|.cfc|.cfm|.cfml|\
                .evoque|.kid|.handlebars|.hbs|.phtml|.jsp|.liquid|.mao|.mhtml|\
                .mc|.mi|.myt|.rhtml|.tpl|.ssp|.tea|.twig|.vm|.fhtml|.sls|\
                .feature|.tap|.awk|.vim|.pot|.po|.weechatlog|.todotxt|.thy|\
                .lean|.rts|.u|.vcl|.bpl|.sil|.vpr|.cirru|.duel|.jbst|.qml|\
                .qbs|.slim|.xqy|.xquery|.xq|.xql|.xqm|.whiley|.x10)
                    # extension recognized
                    pygmentize -f 256 -O style=$PYGMENTIZE_STYLE "$path"
                    ;;
                *)
                    # parse the shebang script header if it exists
                    lexer=$(head -n 1 "$path" |grep "^#\!" |awk -F" " \
'match($1, /\/(\w*)$/, a) {if (a[1]!="env") {print a[1]} else {print $2}}')
                    case "$lexer" in
                        node|nodejs)
                            # workaround for lack of Node.js lexer alias
                            pygmentize -f 256 -O style=$PYGMENTIZE_STYLE \
                                -l js "$path"
                            ;;
                        "")
                            exit 1
                            ;;
                        *)
                            pygmentize -f 256 -O style=$PYGMENTIZE_STYLE \
                                -l $lexer "$path"
                            ;;
                    esac
                    ;;
            esac
            ;;
    esac
done
exit 0

Joe Coder

Posted 2010-03-09T10:44:32.413

Reputation: 161

The one drawback about this approach is that Pygments is a Python program, and so on first use during a shell session, there is a "cold start" delay. Subsequent invocations are much faster. – Joe Coder – 2018-10-12T01:52:31.923

Nice! Really comprehensive. – Dario Seidl – 2018-11-11T16:01:29.633

TIL: If you get an error like "awk: line 1: syntax error at or near ," with the above .lessfilter in place, check that gawk is installed. – Bryce – 2019-10-23T23:38:10.023

Use the GNU Source-highlight; you can install it with apt if you have it, or otherwise install it from source. Then set up an "input preprocessor" for less, with help from the Source-highligh' documentations for setting up with less:

This was suggested by Konstantine Serebriany. The script src-hilite-lesspipe.sh will be installed together with source-highlight. You can use the following environment variables:

 export LESSOPEN="| /path/to/src-hilite-lesspipe.sh %s"
 export LESS=' -R '

This way, when you use less to browse a file, if it is a source file handled by source-highlight, it will be automatically highlighted.

Xavier-Emmanuel Vincent recently provided an alternative version of ANSI color scheme, esc256.style: some terminals can handle 256 colors. Xavier also provided a script which checks how many colors your terminal can handle, and in case, uses the 256 variant. The script is called source-highlight-esc.sh and it will be installed together with the other binaries.

arsaKasra

Posted 2010-03-09T10:44:32.413

Reputation: 193

Condensed from my full blog post about improving less experience: https://www.topbug.net/blog/2016/09/27/make-gnu-less-more-powerful/

For colorful manpages, add the following to your .bashrc or .zshrc:

export LESS_TERMCAP_mb=$'\E[1;31m'     # begin bold
export LESS_TERMCAP_md=$'\E[1;36m'     # begin blink
export LESS_TERMCAP_me=$'\E[0m'        # reset bold/blink
export LESS_TERMCAP_so=$'\E[01;44;33m' # begin reverse video
export LESS_TERMCAP_se=$'\E[0m'        # reset reverse video
export LESS_TERMCAP_us=$'\E[1;32m'     # begin underline
export LESS_TERMCAP_ue=$'\E[0m'        # reset underline

For syntax highlighting, using an existing powerful lesspipe.sh to handle it instead of writing your own: https://github.com/wofr06/lesspipe

xuhdev

Posted 2010-03-09T10:44:32.413

Reputation: 1 399

To expand upon another answer, you can make it work for most if not all of your scripts that don't have extensions by changing the .lessfilter file around just a bit:

#!/bin/sh
    case "$1" in
    *.awk|*.groff|*.java|*.js|*.m4|*.php|*.pl|*.pm|*.pod|*.sh|\
    *.ad[asb]|*.asm|*.inc|*.[ch]|*.[ch]pp|*.[ch]xx|*.cc|*.hh|\
    *.lsp|*.l|*.pas|*.p|*.xml|*.xps|*.xsl|*.axp|*.ppd|*.pov|\
    *.diff|*.patch|*.py|*.rb|*.sql|*.ebuild|*.eclass)
        pygmentize -f 256 "$1";;
    .bashrc|.bash_aliases|.bash_environment)
        pygmentize -f 256 -l sh "$1"
        ;;
    *)
        scriptExec=$(head -1 "$1" |grep "^#\!" |awk -F" " '{print $1}')
        scriptExecStatus=$?
        if [ "$scriptExecStatus" -eq "0" ]; then
            lexer=$(echo $scriptExec |awk -F/ '{print $NF}')
            pygmentize -f 256 -l $lexer "$1"
        else
            exit 1
        fi
esac

exit 0

You'd still need to add the two variables to .bashrc:

export LESS='-R'
export LESSOPEN='|~/.lessfilter %s'

And you'll still need to make .lessfilter executable:

$ chmod 700 ~/.lessfilter

Also I wanted to add that under debian the pygments package is called python-pygments. I had trouble locating it at first because the obvious misspelling of "pigments" as "pygments" wasn't enough of a hint to me that it was a package that might be prefixed with "python-" by the package manager.

Speeddymon

Posted 2010-03-09T10:44:32.413

Reputation: 101

22 comments: 1) Thanks for the improvement. 2) Phrases like "voted best answer" aren't great; that may change (in fact, if this is better than that answer, this post might become the top answer, at which point it'll just be confusing. Maybe just say "to expand upon another answer" or "captaincomic's answer"? – cpast – 2013-02-27T23:07:27.887

You can consider using most utility which is colour-friendly alternative for less and more.

Onlyjob

Posted 2010-03-09T10:44:32.413

Reputation: 324

can you show us one example? I tried here, and the output was black and white. – danilo – 2019-06-13T17:47:20.443

Your input should contain colours. First produce a colorised sample (e.g. ccze -A </var/log/dpkg.log, ls -1 --color /var/log) then pipe it to most: ls -1 --color /var/log | most. – Onlyjob – 2019-06-15T00:06:41.443

yes, I used: git status | less --color, git status | most --color – danilo – 2019-06-15T00:14:49.970

I used most, more, less, and all tools show black and white – danilo – 2019-06-15T00:17:34.337

Make sure that your command produces colours before piping to less or others. Make sure your terminal emulator can output colours. Check TERM environment variable. Read more in https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/148/colorizing-your-terminal-and-shell-environment When possible use modern GNU+Linux distribution like Debian. Use search engine (e.g. https://duckduckgo.com/ https://www.startpage.com/) to find answers. Remember that comments are not for discussion.

– Onlyjob – 2019-06-16T05:06:01.817

I found this simple elegant solution. You don't have to install anything extra as it is already there by default on most machines. As vim is installed by default on most machines, it includes a macro to run vim like less

Some of the options to use it are to create an alias: alias vless='vim -u /usr/share/vim/vim74/macros/less.vim'

or create a symbolic link: ln -s /usr/share/vim/vim74/macros/less.sh ~/bin/vless

Then you just run vless myfile.py

I got most of the information here

Wavesailor

Posted 2010-03-09T10:44:32.413

Reputation: 218

1I have alias lesser='/usr/share/vim/vim80/macros/less.sh' in ~/bash_aliases (in Ubuntu 18.04). Can use shortcuts such as f forward, b backward, d half down, u half up, q quit, etc... – Daniel – 2019-06-05T14:01:43.597

The most intuitive and straight forward solution for me was using pygmentize
by adding the lines below to .bashrc

export LESS='-R'
export LESSOPEN='|pygmentize -g %s'

In case you couldn't call pygmentize, just install like

pip install pygments

ps. The pygmentize executable binary would sit in /usr/local/bin/ or in your /home/username/.virtualenv/venvname/bin/ or somewhere.

David Jung

Posted 2010-03-09T10:44:32.413

Reputation: 1

An alternative to less/more that works with colors out of the box is bat. You can install it with most package managers use it as a pager as well as a cat replacement.

https://github.com/sharkdp/bat

Waylon Walker

Posted 2010-03-09T10:44:32.413

Reputation: 101

-2

None of these were working out of the box for me and I figured out an easy way to make this work so I thought I would share.

Just use tmux, that allows you access and scroll through a larger history and preserves the colors perfectly.

math0ne

Posted 2010-03-09T10:44:32.413

Reputation: 105

1Doesn't tmux permit multiple terminals from one screen, how does it change less's display of colours? – Xen2050 – 2018-10-26T13:23:14.613

@Xen2050 I think it's a neat workaround although this answer doesn't explain how to enter scroll mode (Ctrl-b + [) – siikamiika – 2019-04-18T18:30:23.020

-2

As long as the output text have color control characters, less -R will do.

Leonardo Raele

Posted 2010-03-09T10:44:32.413

Reputation: 97

This is what another answer (from 9 years ago) says. Answers that duplicate other answers are not useful.

– Kamil Maciorowski – 2019-07-15T12:54:48.133

Fair, but that answer doesn't make it explicit that it only works on files that were built with color control characters. – Leonardo Raele – 2019-07-15T13:13:39.233

When reading a file with `less` or `more`, how can I get the content in colors?

Answers

Install Pygments and Gawk

Set Environment Variables

Create ~/.lessfilter

Create `~/.lessfilter`