[TUHS] Less -- was Termcap vs terminfo

[doug@cs.dartmouth.edu (Doug McIlroy)]

> when you - say - run less to display a file, it switches to a dedicated
> region in the terminal memory buffer while printing its output, then
> restores the buffer to back where you were to begin with when you exit
> the pager

Sorry for veering away from Unix history, but this pushed one of the hottest
of my buttons. Less is the epitome of modern Unix decadence. Besides the
maddening behavior described above, why, when all screens have a scroll bar,
should a pager do its own scrolling? But for a quantitative measure of
decadence, try less --help | wc. It takes excess to a level not dreamed of
in Pike's classic critique, "cat -v considered harmful".

Doug