word selection problems using less

[Les]

On Tue, 2007-10-16 at 07:05 -0400, Jacques B. wrote:
> Correction...
> 
> > Press the RETURN key and less now numbers the lines.  Note that long
> > filenames that go to the next line are indeed another line
> 
> Although another line, the line number does not change.  So there goes
> my theory...
> 
> >
> > Jacques B.
> >
> 
The command less is a formatting command.  Yes, Jacques, it does indeed
apply line breaks at the character size of the terminal (unless you
specify a different line size).  Thus the selection process which picks
text out of the display buffer now only gets up to the line break.  The
line numbers you speak of are the lines in the source data file, so even
though less breaks them to multiple lines on the display, the source
still reflects only one line, thus the same input line number is
repeated.

You will have this kind of problem using normal select on any formatted
output, including more, less and some forms of cat.

Regards,
Les H