Why does .lesshst keep showing up in my ~

Question

I never use less, and have always used more. It is what I was introduced to, which is probably why I use more more instead of using less more. ( Sorry, that is going to sound a bit of a mess :) )

I just tried less and couldn't even quit out of it, until I realized it took a vi/vim style command. At least, I believe that is what happened.

By in ~ there is always a .lesshst file, which I rm all the time, as I would prefer to use more or nano for simple stuff and I can use TextMate for simple text editing, or Sublime or whatever else I am in the mood for.

I also just noticed ".jbapps-myusername" is in ~ now as well. This showed up 2 days ago, and I don't recall installing anything strange. Any idea what it is? I have never jailbroken my phone, and don't install hacks on my machine. Those things that do go into that grey area are getting played with in a VM, not on the core of the machine I am working on as my main computer.

$file .jbapps-haneda 
.jbapps-haneda: ASCII text, with no line terminators

The contents of the .jbapps-* file are "483^@" with no leading or trailing newlines, carriage returns etc.

Then there is my git issue. I have a .config directory, inside it is a "git" dir, which inside that is a file called "ignore", which as far as I can tell, is near identical to .gitignore_global. Did git create .config, or is this a convention that other apps use as well?

That brings me to my final issue, in ~ I have .gitignore_global, .gitconfig, and also .config/git/ignore

Seems a mess to me, I would love to mv .gitignore_global .gitconfig .config/git Is there a config somewhere that I can define these locations? It's all just a mess of dot files, it would be so much nicer if ~ simply had .config and all the dot files were in there. I can live with .ssh as it is a directory, so there is at least an effort to not litter my home dir. But raw dot files kind of get in my way. I know I can ls -l and not show the dot files, but I think seeing all your files all the time is a good way to learn what has been created that you might not be aware of.

Thank you.

Suggestions?

Allow

Answer 1

FIlenames starting with . are (lightly) hidden files. They're often use by programs to record configuration or usage information. Sometimes that's recorded from the last time you used the program; that's the case with less and the .lesshist "history" file.

If you aren't sure which program created the file, a websearch will usually answer the question... so I'm leaving understanding the rest of those files as an Exercise For The Reader.

Pantheism

And I take it there is no system level config that says "store dot files: ~/.config" or similar, to take away some of the mess, with perhaps over-rides to "store specific files: ~"? Spring is near, and I am looking to clean house :) – Allow

Unfortunately, each application decides where it wants to keep its own configuration. There are several conventions for this, but the home directory is one of the standard locations. – Pantheism

How would I go about finding what app used less, it was not me. I am tempted to chmod it so it can't run, but I have a feeling some installer scripts may rely on it, which I find crazy, they should use a conned than can only be configured by flags, not some config file that will fail if it is not just as they had theirs. – Allow

One command that uses less is man. If you use more, you've probably used man as well, hence . lesshst existence. – Photochromy

Broken link An error has been encountered in accessing this page. – Till

Answer 2

You can disable the creation of the ~/.lesshst file by setting the LESSHISTFILE variable to -.

export LESSHISTFILE=-

You can also set the above to another valid file path to have the less command use that file instead. I like to do the following in my ~/.zprofile (~/.profile for non-zsh users) file:

export LESSHISTFILE="$XDG_STATE_HOME"/less/history

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As for your git stuff, Git probably wasn't the program that created the ~/.config folder. That folder is part of the XDG Base Dirs specification, and git actually respects this specification. In short all you need to do is:

• mv -T ~/.gitconfig $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/git/config
• mv -T ~/.gitignore_global $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/git/ignore

Also see Arch Wiki for XDG Base Directory

---

Finally, for the other files you notice, unfortunately many developers are not aware of where to put various files, so they end up just using the hidden folder/files method to place stuff in the user's home directory. The Arch Wiki actually has a section that tracks these things. Feel free to report any programs you find that are misusing the hidden folder/files trick.

Neogaea

For example in ~/.bashrc, see also askubuntu.com/questions/386311/… – Zirconia

Just noting here that per the spec, XDG_STATE_HOME would be more appropriate for history files: "$XDG_STATE_HOME ... may contain: actions history (logs, history, recently used files, …)" – Enright

@JakeRomer this is my first time hearing of XDG_STATE_HOME. Is that new? – Neogaea

I think it's relatively a new addition — I can't find a changelog for the spec but I notice that the rust-xdg library only recently added support for it and hasn't released it yet. – Enright

How do I disable in Windows? – Leucoma

Answer 3

A .lesshst file will be generated in one’s home directory if one uses the man command to view documentation; performs a search within such documentation by using the / key, typing a search term, and pressing the Enter key to begin a search; and subsequently exits the man command documentation using the q key.

Apparently, one can use the data in this file to perform a man command search using the last used search term the next time one uses the man command to view documentation. (This would be accomplished by pressing the search key combinations N or Shift+N after having generated a .lesshst file.) It's not clear to me what the benefit of storing search terms preceding the last is though.

Orbadiah

Answer 4

I just looked into that this morning. Because of my OCD, I wanted to move the .lesshst file from my $HOME and put it in my $XDG_LOG_HOME.

For less:

I created a lesskey-file in $XDG_CONFIG_HOME called "lesskey", in this lesskey-file, I set the LESSHISTFILE environment variable to the path of my future less-history-file (in $XDG_LOG_HOME). If you already have a lesskey just add to it. Then in my zshrc (or bashrc) I set the following line :

alias less='less --lesskey-file=$XDG_CONFIG_HOME/lesskey'

That does the trick only when using less

For man:

I put the following line in my zshrc (or bashrc):

alias man='man --pager="less --lesskey-file=$XDG_CONFIG_HOME/lesskey"'

That does the trick with man ! I tried to use more but it does not seem to generate a .lesshst in $HOME

Interception

Any advantage using this approach over directly setting LESSHISTFILE in ~/.profile or similar? – Fist

What is XDG_LOG_HOME? It appears to be non-standard – Neogaea

Answer 5

You may be using less without knowing it. From the man page:

COMPATIBILITY WITH MORE
   If the environment variable LESS_IS_MORE is set to 1, or if the program is invoked via a file link
   named "more", less behaves (mostly) in conformance with the POSIX  "more"  command  specification.
   In this mode, less behaves differently in these ways:

   The  -e  option  works differently.  If the -e option is not set, less behaves as if the -E option
   were set.  If the -e option is set, less behaves as if the -e and -F options were set.

   The -m option works differently.  If the -m option is not set, the medium prompt is used,  and  it
   is prefixed with the string "--More--".  If the -m option is set, the short prompt is used.

   The  -n  option  acts  like the -z option.  The normal behavior of the -n option is unavailable in
   this mode.

   The parameter to the -p option is taken to be a less command rather than a search pattern.

   The LESS environment variable is ignored, and the MORE environment variable is used in its place.

Kmeson

Answer 6

Command git config --list use program LESS.

Manard