more – show paginated text content

more command

more command helps you browse text files in Unix and Linux. Instead of throwing complete contents of the possibly large text file into terminal window, more shows you paginated content – fills up the screen and then waits for a key press to show the next screen’s worth of content.

Paging text files with more

Paging is another word for pagination – the process of showing text content page-by-page, or in case of computers and remote SSH sessions, screen by screen.

Paging with more is intuitive and simple: more command determines the current terminal window size (number of columns and lines) and shows you just the right amount of lines from the specified text time. You then need to press Space to get the next set of lines from the same file.

Scrolling text with more

Modern implementations of the more command allow you normal text scrolling using arrow keys on the keyboard: you can move up and down by one line.

See Also

• Basic Unix Commands
• Linux Commands
• [less command][less-command]
• cat command
• bat syntax highlighting
• systemctl
• systemd reference
• du command
• df command