# less

31 Hacker News commenters recommended less and 8 criticized it, November 2025 to November 2026. It was recommended in 8 of 13 months. It meets the Hacker Approved badge rule.

**Verdict:** Terminal pager for reading files and piped command output, with search and filtering; people value its long track record. Critics point to past security vulnerabilities and a large code base.

## Why people recommend it

- Pipe any command's output into it (3 comments): "I use the piping feature of less to add some interactivity to git-log." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46473133)) ""| less" and type "/foobar" to jump to all mentions of foobar" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48560765)) "`info foo | less` is a better info reader than `info foo`" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47093727))
- Long-proven tool for reading output (3 comments): "less is a 40-year-old tool that exists precisely to solve this problem efficiently" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46988274)) "once you get used to it it's better than tail in many circumstances IMO" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46465269)) "It's incredibly handy and I use it all the time at work" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46468693))
- Search and filter within output (2 comments): "has a nice "&" command that is like "/" (search) but that filters instead like grep." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48930993)) "n/N is easier to jump between matches than / , one less keypress." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47088883))
- Powerful and configurable (2 comments): "it's super powerful and configurable as I call out in the post" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47787183)) "since it does more than more" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47421627))

## What people warn about

- Security vulnerabilities and large code (2 comments): "less having a lot of code (features, bloat) and therefore attack surface" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47812830)) "We also had vulnerabilities in tools such as less" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47811419))
- Quitting loses place or scrollback (3 comments): "Sure, I could use less, but then I context switch on exit; no support from the scrollback buffer." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48954861)) "if I were to do it again I’d find something that at least kept my place on program close" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46230557)) "I hate -E. Quitting immediately does not do good things to my muscle memory." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46467102))
- Bugs out and slow regex (2 comments): "less sometimes bugs out and starts spinning, have to kill it from the outside" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46466566)) "the regex engine is unreasonably slow" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46478068))

## Alternatives hackers recommend

- [fzf](https://hackerapproved.com/p/fzf.md): 78 recommend
- [jq](https://hackerapproved.com/p/jq.md): 75 recommend
- [grep](https://hackerapproved.com/p/grep.md): 65 recommend
- [Atuin](https://hackerapproved.com/p/atuin.md): 63 recommend
- [GitHub CLI](https://hackerapproved.com/p/github-cli.md): 49 recommend

## Cite as

Hacker Approved, "less", https://hackerapproved.com/p/less/ (counts from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026).