How to quit man (less) and keep man info on screen?

peb · 03-07-2004, 07:53 PM

Often I read a man page and want to refer to the information when I use it. The problem is that when you quit the screen clears and wipes it out. Admittedly this is a minor problem because I can always start another xterm , but it is a bit irritating. Is there a way to stop this destructive behaviour?
peb

slakmagik · 03-07-2004, 08:11 PM

I don't understand why you would want to exit less if you want to see the man page. But hit ctrl-z if you want to do something else in the same term and 'fg' when you're done and want the man page back. If that's what you're asking. Check out job control in general.

peb · 03-07-2004, 08:32 PM

Quote:

I don't understand why you would want to exit less if you want to see the man page.

Say I want to find how to use command foo. I type

Code:

man foo

which displays a nice description of how to use foo. I then want to go back to the command line and try this out, so of course I need to get out of man and back to the shell.
To do this I can type q (quit command in man) and I can type Ctrl-Z to suspend man, but in both cases the useful text vanishes from my screen! I want to be able to read the text after I quit / suspend man

peb

slakmagik · 03-07-2004, 09:02 PM

Oh. Try 'man -P more manpage'. Maybe there's a way to get less to not clear, but I doubt it in this case.

But you're missing the beauty of multiple vts and infinite ptys.