Re: \b character escapes in CLI usage

From: Jeff King <peff@peff.net>
Date: Feb 26, 2025, 08:09 UTC
Message-ID: <20250226080902.GA29996@coredump.intra.peff.net>
In-Reply-To: <20250226073822.GA21138@coredump.intra.peff.net>

On Wed, Feb 26, 2025 at 02:38:23AM -0500, Jeff King wrote:

> I wonder if we should consider adding "U" to the default $LESS variable
> we set.

Having tried this for 5 minutes, the answer is a resounding "no". It also treats tabs as control characters, making source code diffs rather ugly. ;)

In modern versions of less you can get around it with:

  LESS="-U --proc-tab"

or:

  LESS="--PROC-BACKSPACE"

but those are new in less 632, from the last year or two. So I don't think we can rely on it in our default variable, but people with recent versions of less should consider setting it.

Looks like it was added for exactly this case:

  https://github.com/gwsw/less/issues/335

-Peff