UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers

I am attempting to copy long lines from "less" to notepad++ logged into remote system using putty but im having all sorts of problems. When i run "less filename" the lines wrap so when i copy and paste into notepad++ what should be a single line is showing as multiple lines. If i run less -S filename i get the full length of the line but i cant figure out how to copy this, as to see the full line I have to scroll across with the arrow key and when i do this the text i have previously copied is lost from the clipboard. In Putty using the Copy All to clipboard does not copy the data that you have to horizontally scroll across to see (although it did on one occasion have not been able to get it to do this again). Could anyone give me some info on how to do this.

Thanks

Buy a bigger monitor .

seriously:

Code:

cat filename | tail -n #

I don't have less, but more suffers from the same problem. cat seems to work.

I had the same problem on an obsolete flavor of Unix. I compiled a newer version of less and the problem went away.

Most lines are hundreds of characters across. I'm also wandering if a line feed is added by less to wrap the text. Anyone know of any ssh clients/terminals that dont do this or allow you to copy a full line in a single action.

more and less have the problem but tail works good. Thanks purdym. It does seem to be due to an obsolete less version but cant do anything about that. Strange though for this to be installed on Solaris 10.

Have you tried outputting to a file on the remote system, converting that file to M$ text format, and then copying the file to the PC with Putty's PSCP command. Alternatively just sftp the file in ascii mode.

agreed, an interactive graphical terminal plus copy-paste really aren't the right tools for transferring large amounts of data. It's awkward no matter how you cut it.

you could also use PUTTY's plink utility to run a remote command and redirect its output into a local file, getting rid of the middleman of a temp file on the server. plink connects just like putty but purely commandline, letting you do things like redirection on it. You should be able to use it like this (from windows cmd prompt):

Code:

c:\users\useryname> plink -batch -pw password user@host remotecommand parameter ... > logfile.txt
c:\users\useryname>