How to turn off word-wrap in less
Short version:
How can I make the less
utility in Linux not wrap lines?
Long version: Often I need to view huge CSV files using less with hundreds of columns. I frequently only care about the first couple columns. However, word wrap causes one line to become several lines even on wide-screen monitors.
Note: For the key binding, see the second part.
In less
, it's called line folding rather than line wrapping.
To set it not to fold, use the -S
option:
-S, --chop-long-lines
Causes lines longer than the screen width to be chopped rather than folded. That is, the portion of a long line that does not fit in the screen width is not shown. The default is to fold long lines; that is, display the remainder on the next line.
— less(1)
Alternatively, as mentioned in the below comment, if you already opened the file, you can toggle the mode by typing -S
(and then Enter for some implementations).
After disabling line folding, you can scroll sideways with the arrow keys.
If you want to stop wrapping permanently, cast these spells:
echo "#env" >> ~/.lesskey
echo "LESS = -S" >> ~/.lesskey
lesskey
Don't know if less has a option for that, but I use the most command which does that by default (and allows scrolling left/right to view it)
To setup git so it always does not wrap:
git config --global core.pager 'less -S'