MORE(1)

🌸 MORE(1) — the more pager, bestie edition 🌸

okay so. you wanna read a file in your terminal but it's giving novel, not vibe? say hi to more from the User Commands corner of the manual. it's the little pager that shows you text one screenful at a time. and yeah, we're gonna read the whole manual together, no skipping, i got you. 🫶

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✨ NAME ✨

more — display the contents of a file in a terminal

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✨ SYNOPSIS ✨

more [options] file ...

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✨ DESCRIPTION ✨

more is a filter for paging through text one screenful at a time. 💅

and now the part where i have to be honest with you: this version is especially primitive. like, especially. the manual literally says so. users should realize that less(1) provides more(1) emulation plus extensive enhancements. so less is basically more but with a glow-up, a skincare routine, and a personality. 👑

not me telling you to go read the other man page, but like. i'm telling you. less is right there.

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✨ OPTIONS ✨

bestie, options can also be pulled from the environment variable MORE (just make sure you put a dash (-) in front of them, okay? don't be weird about it) — but any options you type on the command line override the ones from the environment. command line wins, always. periodt.

• -d, --silent — prompt with "[Press space to continue, 'q' to quit.]", and show "[Press 'h' for instructions.]" instead of ringing the bell when you press an illegal key. polite pager behavior fr fr.
• -l, --logical — do not pause after any line containing a ^L (form feed).
• -e, --exit-on-eof — exit on End-Of-File. this one is enabled by default if the POSIXLY_CORRECT environment variable is not set, or if it's not executed on a terminal.
• -f, --no-pause — count logical lines rather than screen lines (i.e. long lines are not folded). no folding, no drama.
• -p, --print-over — do not scroll. instead, clear the whole screen and then display the text. heads up: this option gets switched on automatically if the executable is named page.
• -c, --clean-print — do not scroll. instead, paint each screen from the top, clearing the remainder of each line as it is displayed. ✨immaculate✨
• -s, --squeeze — squeeze multiple blank lines into one. bye bye dead space 🦋
• -u, --plain — suppress underlining. this option is silently ignored as backwards compatibility, so don't stress about it.
• -n, --lines number — specify the number of lines per screenful. the number argument is a positive decimal integer. the --lines option shall override any values obtained from any other source, such as the number of lines reported by the terminal. it said shall. that's serious.
• -number — a numeric option means the same as the --lines option argument. yes, literally just -number. iconic shorthand. 💅
• +number — start displaying each file at line number.
• +/string — the string to be searched in each file before starting to display it.
• -h, --help — display help text and exit. we love a quick escape hatch.
• -V, --version — display version and exit.

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✨ COMMANDS ✨

the interactive commands for more are based on vi(1) — so if you already know vi, you're lowkey already fluent, iykyk.

some commands may be preceded by a decimal number, called k in the descriptions below. and in the following descriptions, ^X means control-X. keep that in mind, bestie.

• h or ? — Help; display a summary of these commands. if you forget all other commands, remember this one. 🫶 (seriously. this is the safe word.)
• SPACE — display next k lines of text. defaults to current screen size.
• z — display next k lines of text. defaults to current screen size. argument becomes new default.
• RETURN — display next k lines of text. defaults to 1. argument becomes new default.
• d or ^D — scroll k lines. default is current scroll size, initially 11. argument becomes new default.
• q or Q or INTERRUPT — exit. the main character move. 👑
• s — skip forward k lines of text. defaults to 1.
• f — skip forward k screenfuls of text. defaults to 1.
• b or ^B — skip backwards k screenfuls of text. defaults to 1. only works with files, not pipes. 🥲
• ' — go to the place where the last search started.
• = — display current line number.
• /pattern — search for *k*th occurrence of regular expression. defaults to 1.
• n — search for *k*th occurrence of last regular expression. defaults to 1.
• !command or :!command — execute command in a subshell.
• v — start up an editor at current line. the editor is taken from the environment variable VISUAL if defined, or EDITOR if VISUAL is not defined, or defaults to vi(1) if neither VISUAL nor EDITOR is defined.
• ^L — redraw screen. the "omg my terminal is a mess" button ✨
• :n — go to *k*th next file. defaults to 1.
• :p — go to *k*th previous file. defaults to 1.
• :f — display current file name and line number.
• . — repeat previous command.

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🔒 SECURITY 🔒

okay this part is the serious part, so pay attention. when either MORESECURE or PAGERSECURE is set, more will run in "secure" mode and effectively disable the following commands:

• !command or :!command — execute command in a subshell.
• v — start up an editor.

that's it. those two. no shell escapes, no editors. locked down. no cap.

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✨ ENVIRONMENT ✨

the more command respects the following environment variables, if they exist:

• MORE — this variable may be set with favored options to more. ✨your faves✨
• SHELL — current shell in use (normally set by the shell at login time).
• TERM — the terminal type used by more to get the terminal characteristics necessary to manipulate the screen.
• VISUAL — the editor the user prefers. invoked when command key v is pressed.
• EDITOR — the editor of choice when VISUAL is not specified.
• POSIXLY_CORRECT — disable exit-on-eof (see option -e for more details).
• MORESECURE — run more in "secure" mode. see SECURITY for details.
• PAGERSECURE — equivalent to MORESECURE.
• MORE_SHELL_LINES — specify the number of lines the shell prompt occupies on the terminal screen. if this value is set, the number of lines for the shell prompt is subtracted from the number of lines used to print a page on the screen. the value must be greater than zero and less than the current number of lines per screen; otherwise it is silently ignored. this is useful in situations where the printed page has to remain on the screen after exiting more(1) without scrolling up too much as the shell prints a new prompt. chef's kiss utility, honestly. 😌

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📜 HISTORY 📜

the more command appeared in 3.0BSD. this man page documents more version 5.19 (Berkeley 6/29/88), which is currently in use in the Linux community. documentation was produced using several other versions of the man page, and extensive inspection of the source code. so like. they did the research. 🔍

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👑 AUTHORS 👑

• Eric Shienbrood, UC Berkeley.
• Modified by Geoff Peck, UCB to add underlining, single spacing.
• Modified by John Foderaro, UCB to add -c and MORE environment variable.
• Modified by Christian Goeschel Ndjomouo to add MORESECURE, PAGERSECURE and MORE_SHELL_LINES environment variables, and a SECURITY section

legends, all of them. 💖

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🦋 SEE ALSO 🦋

less(1), vi(1)

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🐛 REPORTING BUGS 🐛

for bug reports, use the issue tracker <https://github.com/util-linux/util-linux/issues>.

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📦 AVAILABILITY 📦

the more command is part of the util-linux package which can be downloaded from Linux Kernel Archive <https://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/utils/util-linux/>.

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and that's the whole page, bestie!! 🎀 this was util-linux 2.42.4, dated 2026-09-21 — so if you're quoting me on this, cite it right. now go pipe something into more and press q when you're done. mwah. 💅✨🫶