Subject: bin/7875: less is not the "opposite" of more....
To: None <gnats-bugs@gnats.netbsd.org, markn@fog.net>
From: None <woods@mail.weird.com>
List: netbsd-bugs
Date: 06/28/1999 09:50:56
>Number:         7875
>Category:       bin
>Synopsis:       less is not the "opposite" of more....
>Confidential:   no
>Severity:       non-critical
>Priority:       low
>Responsible:    bin-bug-people (Utility Bug People)
>State:          open
>Class:          doc-bug
>Submitter-Id:   net
>Arrival-Date:   Mon Jun 28 09:50:01 1999
>Last-Modified:
>Originator:     Greg A. Woods
>Organization:
Planix, Inc.; Toronto, Ontario; Canada
>Release:        NetBSD-current
>Environment:

System: NetBSD

>Description:

	Less is not the "opposite" of more.  It might be a "compliment"
	to more (and you can read that any way you wish! ;-), but if it
	were the "opposite" it would read from stdin and write to the
	named files.

	Now this is a somewhat silly and flippant "bug" report, but I
	think it's rather important, especially in the context of the
	one-line description given in the "NAME" section of a unix-style
	manual page.  Even ignoring the symantic confusion of the
	current one-line description it extremely difficult for someone
	searching for commands or documentation by keyword to ever
	discover the "less" program.

	On NetBSD this issue is doubly confounding because the
	traditional BSD "more" program has been replaced by "less" and
	the result is that nobody can find out what "more" is any more,
	especially if they are initially searching through the online
	index with "apropos".
	
>How-To-Repeat:

	$ apropos less
	$ apropos more
	$ apropos file | fgrep less
	$

>Fix:

	Change the one-line description in the NAME section of the
	manual page to something like:

		browse or page through a text file

>Audit-Trail:
>Unformatted: