Less version 696

Version 696 was released for beta testing on 5 Apr 2026.

These are the differences between version 692 and version 696:

• Add --hilite-target option and -DJ to color target line (github #745).
• Add --past-eof option.
• Add --end-prompt option.
• Add --emouse and --rmouse options, and horizontal mouse scrolling and dragging (github #744).
• Add -DT option to format tilde lines (github #725).
• Add %O to prompt strings, to replace less safe %o.
• Add ?o to prompt strings, to detect whether an OSC 8 link is selected.
• When scrolling past end-of-file or before beginning-of-file, stop when exactly one line is left on screen.
• Make -w/-W highlight lines when moving backward as well as forward (github #729).
• Display pattern in "Pattern not found" message (github #731).
• Allow m and M commands to take a numeric argument to specify the line to be marked (github #736).
• Allow ' command to take a numeric argument to specify the screen position on which to place the marked line.
• Support POSIX character classes with the built-in V8 regex library (github #732).
• Change | command to pipe just one line if the marked line is at the top of the screen (github #733).
• If OSC8 opener command begins with "-", suppress command echo, and if it begins with ctrl-P, suppress "done" message (github #747).
• Don't ask for confirmation when input is a binary file and stdout is redirected. Fixes infinite loop in that situation (github #719).
• Make early error messages go to stderr if stdout is redirected (github #719).
• Don't retry read after read error; fixes hang when attempting to read a directory or other unreadable file (github #741).
• Fix incorrect restoration of saved mark if not at top of screen.
• With --save-marks, don't save a mark that was cleared with ESC-m.
• Fix buffer overflow when using malformed lesskey file (github #721).
• Fix unexpected scrolling past end of file (github #720).
• Fix bug when env var in LESSKEY_CONTENT partially matches env var defined in lesskey file (github #727).
• Fix bug when env var in lesskey file matches tail of env var used by less (github #728).
• Fix command parsing bug when one command is a substring of another. Also fixes --no-paste option (github #724).
• Fix incorrect display using --color to set character attributes without color, such as -DS-u (github #730).
• Fix crash when tags file contains invalid line number 0 (github #743).
• Fix build when tparm() doesn't use varargs (github #748).
• Fix prompt overflow when filtering with long prompt (github #749).
• Fix incorrect highlighting when change -i while filtering (github #750).
• Fix erroneous error mesage using --show-preproc-error with some shells (github #753).