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Why is "less" much slower than "grep"?

Fresh7 days ago

Mar 15, 20264104 views

Confidence Score0%

Problem

I sometimes have to look through files that are several gigs and have noticed that finding what I am looking for with grep is much faster than with less. Why could that be? I am talking about looking for a certain tag/word, not even any complicated regex.

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Fix for: Why is "less" much slower than "grep"?

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By default, 'less' calculates line numbers, which can slow it down. Try using the '-n' option to suppress line number calculations and see if that speeds things up.

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Why is "less" much slower than "grep"?

Problem

1 Fix

Fix for: Why is "less" much slower than "grep"?

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