On: Modernizing “less”

[gknoy]

Have you tried using the less-like script distributed with vim? The path varies depending on your distribution of vim

  # ubuntu 14.04
  alias less='/usr/share/vim/vim74/macros/less.sh'

  # ubuntu 12.04: vim73, if I recall right
  alias less='/usr/share/vim/vim73/macros/less.sh'

This behaves like `less` in many ways, and uses your syntax highlighting from vim. My only complaint is that some things with escape codes for colors are not flattened, but instead you see the escape codes. (Diffs seem to work fine, at least.) It also appears to read the whole thing into vim, which is likely not what you want for large files.

I also use the 'vimcat' script from the vimpager project [0] as well. (I'm not sure why I haven't just used the whole thing. I must not have realized there was more when I first grabbed it.)

0: https://github.com/rkitover/vimpager/blob/master/vimcat