If you are used to working with Linux, you will find a lot of file text in Linux world. Configuration files and log files are usually kept in text format. But those file are usually have long content. You can not view them all in one page. So we need to to pagination to those file. And to do that, we can use **more** command.
### What is more command ###
More command is a command for displaying a long text file per page at a time. More command is a built-in command in Linux.
### How to use more ###
To use more command, we just need to type :
$ more file_name
For example we want to see the content of syslog file located in /var/log directory. We can type :
We see that **an indicator on the bottom left**. It show us number 0%. It means that the file is long enough, so the first page is 0% of the total page. To scroll down, use space button. Then we see that the indicator number is increased.
When you run more command, it will fill your screen with the content of the file you are seeing using more. You can limit it into some lines for each page. To do this you can use **-num option**.
For example, you want to **limit the lines only 12 lines** for each page. Then you can type :
Now it will limit 12 lines per page. When you press spacebar to scroll down, it will show you more 12 lines.
### Display user message ###
As we knew, more will display an indicator at the bottom left to show our position in percentage. For those who run more at the first time, he/she may guess how to scroll the page down. To avoid this, we can use **-d** option that will make more command display a user message like this “[**Press space to continue, ‘q’ to quit.**]” .
If user press a button other than button **‘space’ and ‘q’** , then more will display a warning message **“[Press ‘h’ for instructions.]”** .
If you press h button, it will display a help message :
One of the interesting command is the **b** button. **b button allow you** to go back to previous page. In other word, b button allow you **to scroll up**.
You can know that you are in the previous page from the line **…backup 1** page at the top left area.
### Suppress scroll ###
With **-c** option, more will not scroll the page. It will clear the previous page and put the next page or lines there.
If your log file is long enough, it’s not easy to find a string that you want. Search string can help you. Using **+/string** can search a string for you and put the keyword on the beginning of the line. Let say we want to search “**dhclient**” in **/var/logs/syslog** file. Then the syntax is :
More is one of the basic tool to display a content of text file. More can not be used to display binary file. As usual, we can always type **man more** or **more --help** to explore more detail about the usage of more command.
