5+ Practical “more” Command Usage Examples in Linux

Usage:
more [options] filename

more command is used to display text in the terminal screen. It allows only backward movement.
Programs of this sort are called pagers. “more” is a very basic pager, originally allowing only forward navigation through a file, though newer implementations do allow for limited backward movement.

Here’s the listing of example usage of “more” command:
We will be using sample.txt file as an example.

sanfoundry-> cat sample.txt 
Line 1
Line 2 
Line 3
Line 4
Line 5
Line 6
Line 7
Line 8
Line 9
Line 10

1. To see the contents of the file(more file_path):

sanfoundry-> more sample.txt 
Line 1
Line 2 
Line 3
Line 4
Line 5
Line 6
Line 7
Line 8
Line 9
Line 10

2. To Clear screen before displaying(more -c file_path):

sanfoundry-> more -c sample.txt
 
 
 
Line 1
Line 2 
Line 3
Line 4
Line 5
Line 6
Line 7
Line 8
Line 9
Line 10

The output is shown on the new screen.

3. To Specify how many lines are printed in the screen for a given file(more -n file_path):

sanfoundry-> more -4 sample.txt 
Line 1
Line 2 
Line 3
Line 4
--More--(39%)

Here first n numbers of lines with the % amount of the lines are printed. Hit CTRL+c to get the shell prompt back.

4. To Start up the file from the given number(more +n file_path):

sanfoundry-> more +4 sample.txt 
Line 4
Line 5
Line 6
Line 7
Line 8
Line 9
Line 10

5. To Display error messages rather than ringing the terminal bell if an unrecognized command is used(more -d ..):
This is helpful for inexperienced users.:

sanfoundry-> more -d sample 
sample: No such file or directory

6. Doesn’t display extra blank lines(more -s file_path):

sanfoundry-> cat sam.txt 
Line 1
 
Line 2
 
 
 
 
Line 3 
Line 4 
sanfoundry-> more -s sam.txt 
Line 1
 
Line 2
 
Line 3 
Line 4

Here we can see that there are 4 blank lines between Line 2 and Line 3. But with the addition of “-s” option the blank lines are reduced from 4 to 1.

7. To Displays text two lines before the first time text appears(more +/pattern file_path):

sanfoundry-> cat sam.txt 
Hi 
HI
I
am 
good
boy
sanfoundry-> more +/good sam.txt 
 
...skipping
I
am 
good
boy

Here as you can see that to display the output just before two lines, the further lines are skipped. This is very useful in debugging the code.