PuTTY, more/less (on SCO *shudder*), and EOL

PuTTY, more/less (on SCO *shudder*), and EOL

SanctimoniousApe

From: SanctimoniousApe Subject: PuTTY, more/less (on SCO *shudder*), and EOL Date: 29 Dec 2004 07:39:14 -0800 DISCLAIMER/EXCUSE: Not much of an expert on anything, but heavy enough a user to have a vague clue (beyond the "know enough to be dangerous" stage, but not nearly enough along to claim I know WTH I'm doing) - so please bear with me. At my job we have a lot of SCO boxes. Our setup was heavily based upon their UNIX loonnngggg before they got desperate and stupid (and before Linux was really ready for prime-time anyway), so please - no disparaging remarks (we are slowly moving things over to Linux, but only as needed - the prevailing managerial attitude is "why fix what ain't broke?"). Anyway... ISSUE: Using PuTTY to log in to a Linux server to transition through the corporate firewall, telnetting from there to SCO boxes. Found a strange issue when piping a directory listing through "more" (which is really "less" on recent SCO versions). If the listing fills up exactly to the last character (80) of the last line, then when run through more/less it doesn't display the last line (or more likely neglects to go to a new line before returning to a prompt, but I'm not sure since the rest of the line is blank and doesn't actually appear to be overwritten). This means a directory listing may appear to return one less result than there actually is (or no result at all if only one match). I don't experience this problem when using WRQ Reflection at work, so I checked through the settings there and EOL (end of line) wrap is on, and I also have it on at home with PuTTY ("Auto wrap mode initially on"). I've also tried playing with every other PuTTY setting that might seem relevant to no avail. I've tried: - Implicit CR in every LF - Different fonts, including "Terminal" - Setting the terminal size to 80x24 since (to my knowledge) that is the standard SCO ANSI size - Various Terminal->Keyboard settings (normally use SCO), although I tend to doubt that would help since that obviously is related to my input rather than screen output - Various settings in the "line drawling characters", although that doesn't really seem to apply here either - A slew of different "less" option switches (cumulatively: "-EFgiXdsq"). EXAMPLE: Probably will wrap wrong, but you'll see the missing file. I chose these files because they all result in lines of exactly 80 characters wide. The listing has been doctored slightly for security purposes, but the effective line lengths have been kept consistent (if it even matters after wrapping). % ls -lt /dir1/item/data/trn{4649,4665,4537}.tr -rw-rw---- 1 owner group 516248 Dec 27 19:27 /dir1/item/data/trn4649.tr -rw-rw---- 1 owner group 515290 Dec 27 16:30 /dir1/item/data/trn4665.tr -rw-rw---- 1 owner group 784134 Dec 26 21:24 /dir1/item/data/trn4537.tr % ls -lt /dir1/item/data/trn{4649,4665,4537}.tr | more -rw-rw---- 1 owner group 516248 Dec 27 19:27 /dir1/item/data/trn4649.tr -rw-rw---- 1 owner group 515290 Dec 27 16:30 /dir1/item/data/trn4665.tr % SETUP: PuTTY on Win2K, logging in on ssh connection to Linux Firewall system, telnetting from there to SCO boxes, using tcsh shell (no lectures on the evils of csh, please). THANKS in advance to those taking the time to read through this and offer their thoughts.