Converts many file formats to text with coloured or enhanced display,
so their contents or useful information about their contents can be shown.
See the less(1) man page section INPUT PREPROCESSOR.
The input filter is a bash script, which also works under zsh, and is
easily extensible for new formats.
Tab completion mechanisms for archive contents are provided for bash and zsh.
Also works with git version control, mutt mail client, vim text editor.
Can handle a wide variety of file formats, even files compressed and
contained in a hierarchy of archives, enabling users to deeply inspect
archives, and display the contents of files in archives without having
to unpack them.
Converters are checked for and used if available, including Cygwin packages:
antiword MS Word files
binutils text strings in binary files or archives
brotli compressed files or archives
bsdtar archive files
bzip2 compressed files or archives
cabextract MS Cabinet files
catdoc MS Word files
cpio archive files
djvulibre DjVu files
ffmpeg multimedia files
genisoimage ISO files or images
ghostscript PS files
groff man pages or Unix source documents
gzip compressed files or archives
hdf5 HDF v5 files
id3v2 media files
ImageMagick image files
jq JSON data files
libiconv character set code page conversion
lynx HTML files
lz4 compressed files or archives
lzip compressed files or archives
mediainfo multimedia files
netcdf nc4 NetCDF files
odt2txt OpenDocument files
openssl Digital Security Certificates
p7zip archive files
perl-Image-ExifTool media files
pigz compressed files or archives
poppler PDF files
python39-pygments program source code files
qpdf compressed files or archives
rpm RPM files
source-highlight program source code files
texlive TeX files
unrtf RTF files
unzip zip files
util-linux tabular data files
w3m HTML files
wordview MS Office files
writerperfect MS Office files
wv MS Word files
xlsx2csv MS Excel files
xz compressed files or archives
zstd compressed files or archives.
To use these, select them for install in the Cygwin Setup program.
For more information see the project home pages:
https://lesspipe.org/
https://www-zeuthen.desy.de/~friebel/unix/lesspipe.html
It may be enabled by running interactively:
$ eval `/usr/bin/lesspipe.sh`
or adding to a login profile script the command:
eval $(/usr/bin/lesspipe.sh)
The following package has been upgraded in the Cygwin distribution:
- lesspipe 2.25
For changes since the previous Cygwin release see below, or
after installation read /usr/share/doc/lesspipe/ChangeLog:
https://github.com/wofr06/lesspipe/blob/lesspipe/ChangeLog
2026-06-10 2.27
- show all certificates contained in a pem or crt file
- fix perldoc not showing contents (#205) and no cpio contents listing (#206)
2026-06-05 2.26
- add support for sqlite3 files (fixes #204)
- improve log file handling (colorizing, watching growing files)
- limit colorizing file up to sizes of LESS_MAXSIZE_COLOR (200 000) for speed
- introduced .lessignore to not filter files by lesspipe.sh
- use file names without file extension as hint for colorizing (fixes #203)
- adapt xmq calls to changed command line options
- improved documentation
- allow switching off archive_color by appending a colon to the file name
- speedup archive_color and remove external programs from it
- fix bat option processing, issue warning if colorizer not found
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