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Hacker ApprovedShares rank 10 of 86 privilege escalation tools by recommenders
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.
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.
39 people gave an opinion
- recommend it
- 31
- criticize it
- 8
- approval share
- 79%
Recommended in 8 of 13 months
- November 2025: not recommended
- December 2025: recommended
- January 2026: recommended
- February 2026: recommended
- March 2026: recommended
- April 2026: recommended
- May 2026: not recommended
- June 2026: recommended
- July 2026: recommended
- August 2026: not recommended
- September 2026: not recommended
- October 2026: recommended
- November 2026: not recommended (month in progress)
Why it carries the badge
- 31 people recommend itNeeds 10 or more, met.
- 3.9 recommenders for every criticNeeds 2 to 1 or better, met.
- Recommended in 8 of 13 monthsNeeds 4 or more, met.
The same three rules apply to every product, and the badge can’t be bought. How the badge works
What people say about it
The reasons people give, with the number of comments that give each one. Open a reason to read what they said.
Why people recommend it
Each mark is one comment
Pipe any command's output into it
“I use the piping feature of less to add some interactivity to git-log.”
Comment from 3 Jan 2026 in “Assorted Less(1) Tips” “"| less" and type "/foobar" to jump to all mentions of foobar”
Comment from 16 Jun 2026 in “SpaceX to buy Cursor AI coding agent operator Anysphere for $60B” “`info foo | less` is a better info reader than `info foo`”
Comment from 20 Feb 2026 in “Notes on Clarifying Man Pages” Long-proven tool for reading output
“less is a 40-year-old tool that exists precisely to solve this problem efficiently”
Comment from 12 Feb 2026 in “Claude Code Is Being Dumbed Down” “once you get used to it it's better than tail in many circumstances IMO”
Comment from 2 Jan 2026 in “Assorted Less(1) Tips” “It's incredibly handy and I use it all the time at work”
Comment from 2 Jan 2026 in “Assorted Less(1) Tips” Search and filter within output
“has a nice "&" command that is like "/" (search) but that filters instead like grep.”
Comment from 16 Jul 2026 in “Command Line Interface Guidelines” “n/N is easier to jump between matches than / , one less keypress.”
Comment from 20 Feb 2026 in “Notes on Clarifying Man Pages” Powerful and configurable
“it's super powerful and configurable as I call out in the post”
Comment from 16 Apr 2026 in “I made a terminal pager” “since it does more than more”
Comment from 18 Mar 2026 in “The Pleasures of Poor Product Design”
What people warn about
Each mark is one comment
Security vulnerabilities and large code
“less having a lot of code (features, bloat) and therefore attack surface”
Comment from 18 Apr 2026 in “Even "cat readme.txt" is not safe” “We also had vulnerabilities in tools such as less”
Comment from 17 Apr 2026 in “Even "cat readme.txt" is not safe” Quitting loses place or scrollback
“Sure, I could use less, but then I context switch on exit; no support from the scrollback buffer.”
Comment from 18 Jul 2026 in “PSA about abuse of cat(1) command. Don't abuse cats” “if I were to do it again I’d find something that at least kept my place on program close”
Comment from 11 Dec 2025 in “If You Quit Social Media, Will You Read More Books?” “I hate -E. Quitting immediately does not do good things to my muscle memory.”
Comment from 2 Jan 2026 in “Assorted Less(1) Tips” Bugs out and slow regex
“less sometimes bugs out and starts spinning, have to kill it from the outside”
Comment from 2 Jan 2026 in “Assorted Less(1) Tips” “the regex engine is unreasonably slow”
Comment from 3 Jan 2026 in “Assorted Less(1) Tips”
Other privilege escalation tools people recommend
The four most recommended other privilege escalation tools, with the same counts for each, so you can compare like for like. The tick on each bar marks the 2 to 1 line the badge needs.
See all 86 privilege escalation tools, rankedWhat people said
36 of the 39 comments that mention it, newest first. Each links to the original comment.
“but I prefer to use less if I can”
“behavior by behavior verified pager against less”
“Sure, I could use less, but then I context switch on exit; no support from the scrollback buffer.”
“has a nice "&" command that is like "/" (search) but that filters instead like grep.”
“"| less" and type "/foobar" to jump to all mentions of foobar”
“used by full screen apps (e.g. vi, less)”
“Not quite as useful as "less"”
“less having a lot of code (features, bloat) and therefore attack surface”
“We also had vulnerabilities in tools such as less”
“needed a pager with better image support than just less -r”
“it's super powerful and configurable as I call out in the post”
“less displays the link target in the status line when you use the navigation commands”
“less highlights all the C0 bytes, in inverse video (which is trivially easy to spot)”
“since it does more than more”
“some tools that persist using escapes code even when piped to another program (like less)”
“`info foo | less` is a better info reader than `info foo`”
“n/N is easier to jump between matches than / , one less keypress.”
“less is a 40-year-old tool that exists precisely to solve this problem efficiently”
“You have a tool here, which is noted elsewhere: it's "less --raw".”
“I believe that the `--redraw-on-quit` behavior is in every way (slightly) better than the `-X` behavior.”
“I would say it's a bad UX and not just odd.”
“the regex engine is unreasonably slow”
“I use the piping feature of less to add some interactivity to git-log.”
“That was great for saving snippets of news or emails.”
“I also like to bind N to next-file.”
“I think the feature is neat, a clever use of an existing feature, I never use it.”
“It was a great way to get "down in the weeds" and really explore the code.”
“It's incredibly handy and I use it all the time at work”
“-FX does not quit if the output is larger and you jump to the end of a large file”
“is sent to all processes in a pipeline, so it stops less from following and it stops the other process entirely”
“I hate -E. Quitting immediately does not do good things to my muscle memory.”
“less sometimes bugs out and starts spinning, have to kill it from the outside”
“Two things that have helped me a lot of times”
“once you get used to it it's better than tail in many circumstances IMO”
“they've saved me on removing noise from logfiles from time to time”
“if I were to do it again I’d find something that at least kept my place on program close”
Counts come from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026. How we count. Report a mistake.