I'm trying to run less in Linux, and I want it to search for something immediately after launch.
It's basically like doing this:
$ less Then press '/', type a search pattern like "^commit \w+$", then press enter, and press 'n' to find each subsequent result.
I'd like less to be launched, and then search for a pattern. There doesn't seem to be anything in the man page about starting with a pattern, but perhaps you can send it commands like Vim.
From the man page:
-ppattern or --pattern=pattern The -p option on the command line is equivalent to specifying +/pattern; that is, it tells less to start at the first occur- rence of pattern in the file. This works as expected using the latest version of less (436).
You can use + to send arbitrary commands. E.g.:
less +/pattern -p PATTERN (as posted by nik) is equivalent to +/PATTERN.
+/pattern is equivalent to --pattern=pattern, but it can do more, such as to start less at the end of a file, do less +G. The + option gives you everything -p|--pattern does plus the entire set of other commands to run in less, so I say don't bother remembering -p and just use +/ to search just as you would from inside less. You mean like?
less -p PATTERN filename
That is in the manual.
There are actually two ways to do this. As everyone else mentioned, you can use the -p/--pattern options:
less -p<pattern> less --pattern=<pattern> Your pattern will have to be wrapped in quotation marks since it contains a space.
However, there is actually a second way to do this:
LESS=-p<pattern> less LESS=--pattern=<pattern> less The second method has one distinct advantage. It can be used with other commands that use less for pagination!:
LESS=-p"^ read \[" man bash This can quite literally be extended to search the bash man page for all builtin commands. I got a little carried away one day and "fixed" man for bash builtins.
There is indeed somthing in the less manpage.
You could try :
less -p<pattern> or
less --pattern=<patern> Another option is that when you run the less then type & and the pattern of your interest.
This way you can get only the lines that has your pattern of interest not all the lines. Meaning shows only the matching lines.
&/ <pattern_of_interest> 
core.pager = less -cFRX --pattern='^commit'and you'll be able to go to the next commit with the 'n' key right away.