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Syncopated
Asked: 2019-07-03 18:25:30 +0800 CST

Which package contains /usr/bin/less for Ubuntu 19.04?

  • 772

As in the title. Neither dpkg -S /usr/bin/less nor apt-file search /usr/bin/less produces anything useful.

Does it mean that there's a bug or that less really doesn't come from any package?

(In case you're wondering why I need to know the answer, I find that the less is an old version 487 instead of 530 that has a feature I want.)

$ which less
/usr/bin/less
$ dpkg -S /usr/bin/less
dpkg-query: no path found matching pattern /usr/bin/less
$ apt-file search /usr/bin/less
colorized-logs: /usr/bin/lesstty
libcss-lessp-perl: /usr/bin/lessp
node-less: /usr/bin/lessc
dpkg apt less

1 Answers

  1. Best Answer

    That's because /usr/bin/less is a symbolic link:

    $ ls -l /usr/bin/less
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 9 Jul 21  2017 /usr/bin/less -> /bin/less

    The latter is provided by package less

    $ dpkg -S $(realpath $(which less))
less: /bin/less

    The symbolic link is one of several created by the postinst script during package configuration:

    case "$1" in
    configure)
        for file in lessfile lesspipe lesskey lessecho less; do
          if [ ! -e /usr/bin/$file ]; then
            ln -s /bin/$file /usr/bin/$file
          fi
        done
    .
    .
    .

    (The same script installs less as the default pager under update-alternatives.)

    • 13