Pausing terminal output

Question

I have a command which outputs lots of data (say, strace with lots of syscalls, running for a few minutes).

Is there any option (e.g. command wrapper or something similar) that would allow me to pause the output of the command (just the output on the screen, I don't mind the command running in the background), then unpause it after I take a look on its output?

score 47 · Accepted Answer · edited Jul 08 '16 at 11:19

47

You have three options:

press controlS to stop output, controlQ to resume (this is called XON/XOFF)
redirect your output to a pager such as less, e.g., strace date | less
redirect your output to a file, e.g., strace -o foo date, and browse it later.

edited Jul 08 '16 at 11:19

Law29

1,136
1
9
18

answered Jul 08 '16 at 11:02

Thomas Dickey

75,040
9
171
268

8

Note that stopping the output with either of the two first options here will make the data generating program pause too, while it waits for the output stream to be consumed. – Kusalananda Jul 08 '16 at 11:25

score 2 · Answer 2 · edited Mar 21 '19 at 12:32

2

use the | pipe for example

ifconfig -a | more

this will list until screen is full and one can then scroll further by hitting return / enter.

edited Mar 21 '19 at 12:32

Siva

9,017
8
56
86

answered Mar 21 '19 at 12:02

chi onyenkwu

29
1

1

I prefer this to `less` because it exits naturally. – benJephunneh Mar 31 '20 at 03:13
But isn't that more or less the same? ;) – JamesR404 Aug 04 '22 at 13:38

Pausing terminal output

2 Answers2