---
name: "lessecho"
section: "1"
platform: "freebsd"
package: "base"
version: "16.0-CURRENT-20261027-61c70dc16a79"
release: "FreeBSD 16.0-CURRENT (2026-10-27)"
platforms: ["linux", "freebsd", "macos"]
url: "https://new.carta.tech/lessecho"
---

# lessecho(1)

expand metacharacters

## NAME

lessecho - expand metacharacters

## SYNOPSIS

**lessecho** \[**-a**\] \[**-o** *x*\] \[**-c** *x*\] \[**-p** *n*\] \[**-d** *n*\] \[**-m** *x*\] \[**-n** *n*\] \[**-e** *x*\] *file* ...

**lessecho --version**

## DESCRIPTION

**lessecho** is a program that simply echos its arguments on standard output. But any metacharacter in the output is preceded by an "escape" character, which by default is a backslash. **lessecho** is invoked internally by **less**, and is not intended to be used directly by humans.

## OPTIONS

A summary of options is included below.

- **-e*x***

  Specifies "*x*", rather than backslash, to be the escape char for metachars. If *x* is "-", no escape char is used and arguments containing metachars are surrounded by quotes instead.

- **-o*x***

  Specifies "*x*", rather than double-quote, to be the open quote character, which is used if the -e- option is specified.

- **-c*x***

  Specifies "*x*" to be the close quote character.

- **-p*n***

  Specifies "*n*" to be the open quote character, as an integer.

- **-d*n***

  Specifies "*n*" to be the close quote character, as an integer.

- **-m*x***

  Specifies "*x*" to be a metachar. By default, no characters are considered metachars.

- **-n*n***

  Specifies "*n*" to be a metachar, as an integer.

- **-f*n***

  Specifies "*n*" to be the escape char for metachars, as an integer.

- **-a**

  Specifies that all arguments are to be quoted. The default is that only arguments containing metacharacters are quoted.

## SEE ALSO

[**less**(1)](/less/1.md)

## AUTHOR

This manual page was written by Thomas Schoepf ⟨schoepf@debian.org⟩, for the Debian GNU/Linux system (but may be used by others).

Report bugs at ⟨https://\\:github\\:.com/\\:gwsw/\\:less/\\:issues⟩.