% less --help | wc

      298

Last time I looked, the line count was about 220. Bloat is self-catalyzing. 

What prompted me to look was another disheartening discovery. The "small special tool" Gnu diff has a 95-page manual!  And it doesn't cover the option I was looking up (-h). To be fair, the manual includes related programs like diff3(1), sdiff(1) and patch(1), but the original manual for each fit on one page.

Doug