Show special characters in Unix while using 'less' Command

less will look in its environment to see if there is a variable named LESS

You can set LESS in one of your ~/.profile (.bash_rc, etc, etc) and then anytime you run less from the comand line, it will find the LESS.

Try adding this

export LESS="-CQaix4"

This is the setup I use, there are some behaviors embedded in that may confuse you, so you can find out about what all of these mean from the help function in less, just tap the 'h' key and nose around, or run less --help.

Edit:

I looked at the help, and noticed there is also an -r option

-r  -R  ....  --raw-control-chars  --RAW-CONTROL-CHARS                Output "raw" control characters.

I agree that cat may be the most exact match to your stated needs.

cat -vet file | less

Will add '$' at end of each line and convert tab char to visual '^I'.

cat --help   (edited)    -e                       equivalent to -vE    -E, --show-ends          display $ at end of each line    -t                       equivalent to -vT    -T, --show-tabs          display TAB characters as ^I    -v, --show-nonprinting   use ^ and M- notation, except for LFD and TAB

I hope this helps.

You can do that with cat and that pipe the output to less:

cat -e yourFile | less

This excerpt from man cat explains what -e means:

   -e     equivalent to -vE   -E, --show-ends          display $ at end of each line   -v, --show-nonprinting          use ^ and M- notation, except for LFD and TAB

For less use -u to display carriage returns (^M) and backspaces (^H), or -U to show the previous and tabs (^I) for example:

$ awk 'BEGIN{print "foo\bbar\tbaz\r\n"}' | less -U foo^Hbar^Ibaz^M(END)

Without the -U switch the output would be:

fobar   baz(END)

See man less for more exact description on the features.