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I have text files with lines that of length greater than my terminal width. I generally use less to view these files and often want to copy something that wraps from one line to the next.

I've found that when I copy this in Terminal.app (select with the mouse and pressing Cmd-V), a newline character gets copied at the wrap point. This is no good.

I've also learned that if I open the file in vim and do the same, no newline character gets copied. This is great, but I don't particularly want to open vim every time I just want to look at a file quickly.

I have two questions:

  • Curiosity: What is the underlying reason one of these tools adds the newline and one doesn't? I can only assume it's a $TERM/termcap issue, but I really don't know.

  • Practicality: What are my options for a pager that won't insert newlines when I copy wrapped lines? Use vim as a pager? Change some TERM setting?

Thanks for any suggestions.

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Reset to default
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With Cygwin's less (version 444), I find that it only inserts newlines into lines scrolled in from the top of the screen when going back in a file, and that this can be avoided by forcing a repaint through pressing r.

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  • I had been using less version 382. I updated to 444 and the newlines are gone! Thanks a lot.
    – nall
    Commented Nov 10, 2011 at 17:19

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