Why does "less" indicate weird lines such as unexpected line feeds or missing contents when browsing a file line per line?
Environment
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.4
Issue
When browsing a file with "less", long lines may not be displayed in their entirety when scrolling forward line per line due to a known bug (bug #509553) introduced in the version of "less" which ships with Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.4.
Part of the content of the file can be missing and random portions of the lines displayed in place, causing the original text to be unreadable.
For example:
less gpl.txt
Resolution
The solution is to use the option "--old-bot" to revert to the previous behavior.
For example:
less --old-bot gpl.txt
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