lesstty(1)

📦 version 2.7, in debian bookworm, debian trixie, epel 10, epel 9, fedora 43, fedora 44, nixos 26.05, nixpkgs unstable, ubuntu jammy, ubuntu noble, ubuntu questing, ubuntu resolute, ubuntu stonking

✨ lesstty — like, the manual page bestie ✨

okay so real quick, before anything else: this is lesstty, section 1 of the General Commands Manual, and I need you to know it's about to be your new fave 💅

💖 NAME 💖

lesstty — run a program and yeet its output straight into a color-capable pager 🌈

🎀 SYNOPSIS 🎀

lesstty command [ args... ]

like, you give it a command, and optionally a whole little squad of args... trailing behind it. that's the whole vibe check 🫶

🌸 DESCRIPTION 🌸

So here's the tea, bestie: some programs are absolute divas and change how they behave the second they notice their output is being redirected 😭 They'll go all monochrome and boring on you, no colors, no nothing.

lesstty runs a program like that and sends its output to less -R for viewing. So you get the pretty colors, the paging, the whole experience. iconic behavior honestly ✨

And like, no cap, this is merely a shorthand for:

pipetty command | less -R

with one lil bonus: it passes errors from command through. So if your program throws a fit, you actually hear about it instead of it getting swallowed into the void 💀

lowkey the whole point: pipetty handles the fake-out so the program thinks it's talking to a terminal, less -R handles the pretty paging, and lesstty is the bestie that introduces them 💖

🦋 SEE ALSO 🦋

  • pipetty(1) — the partner in crime that makes the program think it's on a tty
  • less(1) — the pager doing all the actual displaying

and that's the whole page, bestie, you ate it 🍓

this lil gem is dated 2017-10-09, lives in the General Commands Manual as lesstty(1), and yeah that's it — go pipe something pretty 💜👑

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