[comp.sources.wanted] less for messy-dos with pipes??

det@hawkmoon.MN.ORG (Derek E. Terveer) (05/15/89)

The version of less that i have for ms-dos does not implement piping, i.e., one
cannot type the following command at the messy-dos prompt and get the expected
output:

	cat file | less

Does anyone have an implementation of less for dos that *does* do piping?

Please send e-mail to det@hawkmoon.MN.ORG

Thanks in advance,

derek
-- 
Derek Terveer 	    det@hawkmoon.MN.ORG || ..!uunet!rosevax!elric!hawkmoon!det
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ked@garnet.berkeley.edu (Earl H. Kinmonth) (05/16/89)

In article <933@hawkmoon.MN.ORG> det@hawkmoon.MN.ORG (Derek E. Terveer) writes:
>The version of less that i have for ms-dos does not implement piping, i.e., one
>cannot type the following command at the messy-dos prompt and get the expected
>output:
>
>	cat file | less
>
Why, pray tell, run the output of cat into less?  In effect you are
doing

	copy file file.tmp
	less file.tmp

In case you haven't noticed, the brain-dead pipes on MSDOS simply make
intermediate scratch files.  The right side of the pipe is not activated
until the left has finished completely.

Finally, what version of less for the PeeCee do you have?  I just checked
mine with

	ls -lR | less

and it worked. (Although I used ls from MKS Toolkit, I ran under
command.com rather than the korn shell just to check).

Earl H. Kinmonth
History Department
University of California, Davis
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