BMORE(1)

💖 BMORE(1) — browse through a binary file 💖

🌸 NAME 🌸

bmore — browse through a binary file. Bestie, it’s literally the binary-browsing icon 💅

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✨ SYNOPSIS ✨

bmore [ -acdir ] [ -n lines ] [ -w cols ] [ +linenumber ] [ +/ASCII-pattern ] [ +\Hex-pattern ] [ filename ... ]

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🦋 DESCRIPTION 🦋

Okay so more is a filter that displays the contents of a binary file on the terminal, one screenful at a time. It normally pauses after each screenful and prints --More-- at the bottom of the screen. bmore provides a two-line overlap between screens for continuity. If bmore is reading from a file rather than a pipe, the percentage of characters displayed so far is also shown. Slay.

bmore scrolls up to display one more screen line in response to a RETURN character; it displays another screenful in response to a SPACE character. Other commands are listed below.

The screen is divided in three sections or panes: the byte offset (extreme left), the hex pane (middle), and an ascii pane (right) which shows as printable characters those bytes in the hex pane. On an 80 column terminal there will be sixteen hex values and their ASCII values on each screen line. Note that (as one would expect) the first byte has the offset 0 (zero). Iconic behavior, no cap.

bmore sets the terminal to noecho mode, so that the output can be continuous. Commands that you type do not normally show up on your terminal, except for the /, \, and ! commands.

If the standard output is not a terminal, more acts just like cat(1V), except that a header is printed before each file in a series.

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🎀 OPTIONS 🎀

• -a — ASCII mode: no hex representation of the contents. Non printable characters are displayed as a dot (.).
• -c — Clear before displaying. Redrawing the screen instead of scrolling.
• -d — Display error messages rather than ringing the terminal bell if an unrecognized command is used. This is helpful for inexperienced users.
• -i — Ignore case for searching.
• -n lines — Displays the indicated number of lines in each screenful, rather than the default (the number of lines in the terminal screen less two).
• -r — Characters between 160 - 254 are displayed as "reverse video text" as used in some legacy systems (Atari, Commodore, Apple II, etc).
• -w cols — Display number of cols in each line.
• +linenumber — Start up at linenumber.
• +/ASCII-pattern — Start up at the line containing the regular expression pattern. Note: unlike editors, this construct should not end with a /. If it does, then the trailing slash is taken as a character in the search pattern.
• +\Hex-pattern — this one appears in the SYNOPSIS, but this page doesn’t give it its own description, so I’m not inventing deets, bestie 💅

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🕹️ USAGE 🕹️

🌈 Commands 🌈

The commands take effect immediately; it is not necessary to type a carriage return. Up to the time when the command character itself is given, the user may type the line kill character to cancel the numerical argument being formed. In addition, the user may type the erase character to redisplay the --More--(xx%) message.

In the following commands, i is a numerical argument (1 by default).

• iSPACE — Display another screenful, or i more lines if i is specified.
• iRETURN — Display another line, or i more lines, if specified.
• i^D — (CTRL-D) Display (scroll down) 11 more lines. When i is given, the scroll size is set to i.
• id — Same as ^D.
• iz — Same as SPACE, except that i, if present, becomes the new default number of lines per screenful.
• is — Skip i lines and then print a screenful.
• if — Skip i screenfuls and then print a screenful.
• i^B — (CTRL-B) Skip back i screenfuls and then print a screenful.
• b — Same as ^B (CTRL-D).
• q, Q — Exit from more.
• = — Display the current line number.
• v — Drop into the bvi(1) editor at the current offset of the current file.
• w — Drop into the bvi(1) editor at the current offset of the current file. Only the portion of the file displayed on the screen will be loaded.
• h — Help. Give a description of all the more commands.
• i/pattern — Search for the ith occurrence of the regular expression pattern. Display the screenful starting at the file position that contains the ith match for the regular expression ASCII-pattern, or the end of a pipe, whichever comes first. If bmore is displaying a file and there is no such match, its position in the file remains unchanged. Regular expressions can be edited using erase and kill characters. Erasing back past the first column cancels the search command.
• ' — Single quote. Go to the point from which the last search started. If no search has been performed in the current file, go to the beginning of the file.
• !command — Invoke a shell to execute command. The characters % and !, when used within command are replaced with the current filename and the previous shell command, respectively. If there is no current filename, % is not expanded. Prepend a backslash to these characters to escape expansion.
• i:n — Skip to the ith next filename given in the command line, or to the last filename in the list if i is out of range.
• i:p — Skip to the ith previous filename given in the command line, or to the first filename if i is out of range. If given while more is positioned within a file, go to the beginning of the file. If more is reading from a pipe, more simply rings the terminal bell.
• :f — Display the current filename and offset number.
• :q, :Q — Exit from bmore (same as q or Q).
• . — Dot. Repeat the previous command.

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🍓 FILES 🍓

• /etc/termcap — terminal data base
• /usr/local/share/bmore.help — help file

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👑 SEE ALSO 👑

bvi(1), more(1), termcap(5)

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💜 AUTHOR 💜

bmore was developed by Gerhard Buergmann, Vienna, Austria gerhard@puon.at

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And that’s the whole manual, bestie 🫶 — source: General Commands Manual, manual: BMORE(1), date: 24 May 2025. mwah 💋✨