How can I save the current contents of less to a file?
On my system, man less
says
s filename Save the input to a file. This only works if the input is a pipe, not an ordinary file.
Works for me!
The accepted answer doesn't work on the Mac -- as @benroth says, pressing s
just moves down a line -- but you can use a different method.
In less --help
:
|Xcommand Pipe file between current pos & mark X to shell command.
and
A mark is any upper-case or lower-case letter.
Certain marks are predefined:
^ means beginning of the file
$ means end of the file
So if you go to the top of the buffer (<
) and then:
|$cat > /tmp/foo.txt
the contents of the buffer will be written out to /tmp/foo.txt
.
When your less
is opened, you can save the complete output to a file.
Like vim
, less supports commands.
Just type the key s
, then less
will ask you the name of the file where you wish to save the content, just type the file name and then type Enter
.
Cheers