A terminal pager, or paging program, is a computer program

Computer program

A computer program is a sequence of instructions written to perform a specified task with a computer. A computer requires programs to function, typically executing the program's instructions in a central processor. The program has an executable form that the computer can use directly to execute...

 used to view (but not modify) the contents of a text file

Text file

A text file is a kind of computer file that is structured as a sequence of lines of electronic text. A text file exists within a computer file system...

 moving down the file one line or one screen at a time. Some, but not all, pagers allow movement up a file. A popular cross-platform

Cross-platform

In computing, cross-platform, or multi-platform, is an attribute conferred to computer software or computing methods and concepts that are implemented and inter-operate on multiple computer platforms...

 terminal pager is more. more can move forwards and backwards in text files but cannot move backwards in pipes. less

Less (Unix)

less is a terminal pager program on Unix, Windows, and Unix-like systems used to view the contents of a text file one screen at a time. It is similar to more, but has the extended capability of allowing both forward and backward navigation through the file...

 is a more advanced pager that allows movement forward and backward, and contains extra functions such as search.

Some programs incorporate their own paging function, for example bash's tab completion

Command line completion

Command line completion is a common feature of command line interpreters, in which the program automatically fills in partially typed commands....

 function.

Examples

• more
• less
  Less (Unix)
  less is a terminal pager program on Unix, Windows, and Unix-like systems used to view the contents of a text file one screen at a time. It is similar to more, but has the extended capability of allowing both forward and backward navigation through the file...
  
  
• pg
  Pg (Unix)
  pg is a terminal pager program on Unix and Unix-like systems for viewing text files. It can also be used to page through the output of a command via a pipe. pg uses an interface similar to vi, but commands are different. more, and less are more commonly used paging programs....
  
  
• most
  Most (Unix)
  most is a terminal pager program on Unix, OpenVMS, Windows and Unix-like systems used to view the contents of a text file one screen at a time. Programs of this sort are called pagers. It is similar to more, but has the extended capability of allowing both forward and backward navigation through...
  
  
• lv

External links

• Most
• lv - a Powerful Multilingual File Viewer / Grep