Take the 2-minute tour ×

I saw "pager" in several places:

less is a terminal pager program on Unix

option -P for man Specify which output pager to use.

What is a pager? How is it related to and different from a terminal? Thanks.

share|improve this question
less is the gnu more. (gnu can be pronounced the same as new) –  richard Jul 11 '14 at 15:43
According to the man page, less is the opposite of more. –  groxxda Jul 11 '14 at 15:50
Just in case there's any confusion, "pager" may also refer to a GUI application which shows a miniaturized version of the desktop. –  goldilocks Jul 11 '14 at 16:11
A pager is something like this. –  Vÿska Jul 11 '14 at 18:43
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terminal_pager –  Gilles Jul 11 '14 at 20:01

1 Answer 1

up vote 8 down vote accepted

As the name implies, roughly a pager is a piece of software that helps the user get the output one page at a time, by getting the size of rows of the terminal and displaying that many lines.

share|improve this answer
what is like with and without a pager? Thanks. –  Tim Jul 11 '14 at 15:35
if you don't pipe your output through a pager (less, more and most come to mind), that output will appear on your screen all at once and thus you might lose something if said output is bigger than the number of lines of your terminal. –  schaiba Jul 11 '14 at 15:39
You only need to use a pager if the output is longer than the terminal hight. However if the terminal has a scroll back, you may feel that you do not need it, as you can scroll back, but the pager still has the advantage of starting at the top. Scrolling back starts at the bottom. –  richard Jul 11 '14 at 15:42
Scroll back is also finite. A pager is not limited to any particular size. –  Faheem Mitha Jul 11 '14 at 16:08
Most pagers also provide extra features such as pattern searching and position marking. –  Kevin Thibedeau Jul 11 '14 at 17:59

Your Answer


