Navigating text files with less

Throughout this book, you will often use programs and tools that use the program less or a less-like navigation to view and read file content or display output. At first, the control can seem a bit unintuitive .Here, in this recipe, we will show you the basics of how to navigate through a file using less controls.

Getting ready

To complete this recipe, you will require a working installation of the CentOS 7 operating system with root privileges.

How to do it...

1. To begin, log in as root and type the following command to open a program that uses less for navigation:

   man man
   

2. To navigate, press the up and down key to scroll up and down one line at a time, the spacebar to scroll down a page, and the b key to scroll up a page. You can search within the text using the forward slash key, /,followed by the search term, then press Return to search. Press n to jump to the next search result. Press the q key to exit.

How it works...

Here, in this short recipe, we have shown...