p interprets non printable characters, such as control characters. Control characters are transformed into the printable character space and preceded by a "^" character. If the eight bit in a character is on and the character appears to unprintable, a tilde "~" character is preceded in addition. Tabs are expanded into spaces as usual on UNIX and lines that exceed the line length of the terminal are wrapped around and continued on the next line of the screen.
length =# Set the number of lines per page. If no termcap entry could be found length defaults to 24.
width =# Set the number of characters per line. If no termcap entry could be found width defaults to 79.
-blank Suppress multiple blank lines on the output.
-clear Clear the screen before displaying each new page.
-debug Print additional debugging information.
-dos Hide carriage-return characters that are directly followed by a new-line.
-end Mark the end of each line with the character '$'.
-help Print a short summary of the available options and commands.
-nodos Do not hide carriage-return characters that are directly followed by a new-line. This option is needed in order to make p binary transparent, so reading files that do not follow DOS newline conventions will not be automatically converted.
-raw Do not expand control characters.
-raw8 Do not expand characters with top bit set.
-silent Do not print a "MORE ?" prompt. Only do the formatting for the content of the files. This option may be used when p is only used as a filter.
-tab Do not expand tabs to spaces, expand them to '^I'.
-visible Underlining and bold sequences become visible.
-help Prints a short summary of the p (1) options and exists.
-version Prints the p (1) version number string and exists.
15 y,Y,<CR>,<LF> Yes. Display the next full screen of text.
h,H Half. Display the next half screen of text.
q,Q Quarter. Display the next quarter screen of text.
l,L Line. Display the next line of text.
1-9 Lines. Dislay the next 1-9 lines of text.
n,N Next / No . Display the next file. If the current file is the last file in the list exit p .
p,P Previous. Display the previous file. If the current file is the first file in the list just start to display the first file.
s,S Stop. Exit the p program.
/ pattern Search. Start searching for pattern .
r,R Research. Re search for previous pattern.
^L Redraw. Redisplay the current screen content.
v,V View (Edit). Start the editor in read only mode with cursor position set to the current line.
! Shell. Execute a shell using the rest of the input line as shell command.
? Help. Print a short help message that lists valid commands.
other Error. All other input will cause a beep if the environment BEEP is not set to off.
If the end of a file is reached, p will start with the next file.
SHELL For the shell to use for shell command escapes, file name globbing and similar.
EDITOR The name of the editor (used for the v command).
HOME To find the private files like ~/.termcap
TERM The type of terminal for which the output should be formatted.
TERMCAP This environment variable holds either a precompiled termcap entry or the pathname to be used to find a termcap database file. If it holds a precompiled entry that does not match the TERM environment, the termcap database is parsed as if the TERMCAP environment is not set.
TERMPATH If TERMCAP is empty, then the TERMPATH environment is scanned for pathnames of files that contain a termcap database. It holds a list of filenames separated by colons or spaces (i.e., ":" or " "). If the TERMPATH symbol is not set, the files $HOME/.termcap and /etc/termcap are scanned in that order.
BEEP The environment variable BEEP is used to suppress beeping when set to off. This helps to use p on a notebook in a meeting.
/etc/termcap The system's terminal capabilities database.
~/.termcap The private terminal capabilities database. This file is checked first, in case that the TERMPATH environment is not defined.
If the terminal driver is configured to strip the eight bit in characters, p will display a tilde character before any character that has the eight bit set (i.e. ~V).