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Date:      Thu, 19 Jul 2007 19:50:43 +1000
From:      Peter Jeremy <peterjeremy@optushome.com.au>
To:        Rui Paulo <rpaulo@fnop.net>
Cc:        current@freebsd.org
Subject:   Re: less -r broken with long lines
Message-ID:  <20070719095043.GT1141@turion.vk2pj.dyndns.org>
In-Reply-To: <469E737B.5090609@fnop.net>
References:  <469D651C.6080504@fnop.net> <40882.1184765616@snapdragon.csl.sri.com> <469E737B.5090609@fnop.net>

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On 2007-Jul-18 21:09:31 +0100, Rui Paulo <rpaulo@fnop.net> wrote:
>It depends on the interpretation. "various display problems may result"
>may very well be a reference to the fact that control characters mangle
>the output. I wasn't expecting long lines to mangle the output. If you
>less -r a file without control characters, but with a least a line wider
>than your screen size, you'll notice the problem.

I think the behaviour of "less" is reasonable.  To correctly work out
how many lines of input will fill the screen, "less" needs to identify
if/where the terminal will split a string of characters into distinct
physical lines.  In the face of arbitrary control sequences, it is
impossible for "less" to determine this since it cannot know how a
particular string will be processed.  (It can't rely on termcap/info
strings because they are unlikely to document all terminal features).

--=20
Peter Jeremy

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