Sorry, I forgot to include that info. I'm running it under Windows 7, 64-bit, so no version of 'less' is provided by the OS. There is a 'less.exe' in the same directory as Octave, though, that was installed along with Octave, I guess.
I couldn't find any file named 'octaverc', maybe that's the problem. Or maybe it has a different name under Windows. I'm not sure where to look for it under Windows.
Is '-X' a valid option for the Linux version of 'less'? Maybe the version of less that was installed isn't 100% compatible.
Thanks.