title: LESSCHARSET=utf-8 less doesn't seem to work
body: <p>I'm trying to view a UTF-8 text file/stream in <code>less</code>, and even if I invoke it like this:</p>
  
  <pre><code>cat file | LESSCHARSET=utf-8 less
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>the non-ASCII compatible UTF-8 characters don't display correctly. Instead, their hex values appear highlighted in brackets, e.g. <code>&lt;F4&gt;</code>.</p>
  
  <p>The reading the same text in vim with UTF-8 encoding poses no problems. So I'm thinking something is wrong with the way I'm invoking <code>less</code>.</p>
  
  <p>My <code>locale</code> output is the following</p>
  
  <pre><code>LANG="en_US.UTF-8"
  LC_COLLATE="en_US.UTF-8"
  LC_CTYPE="en_US.UTF-8"
  LC_MESSAGES="en_US.UTF-8"
  LC_MONETARY="en_US.UTF-8"
  LC_NUMERIC="en_US.UTF-8"
  LC_TIME="en_US.UTF-8"
  LC_ALL=
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>My less version is the one installed by XCode on OSX Leopard:</p>
  
  <pre><code>$ less --version | sed 's/^/    /'
  less 394
  Copyright (C) 1984-2005 Mark Nudelman
  
  less comes with NO WARRANTY, to the extent permitted by law.
  For information about the terms of redistribution, 
  see the file named README in the less distribution.
  Homepage: http://www.greenwoodsoftware.com/less
  </code></pre>
  
  <p><code>locale -a | grep US | sed 's/^/    /'</code> outputs the following:</p>
  
  <pre><code>en_AU.US-ASCII
  en_CA.US-ASCII
  en_GB.US-ASCII
  en_NZ.US-ASCII
  en_US
  en_US.ISO8859-1
  en_US.ISO8859-15
  en_US.US-ASCII
  en_US.UTF-8
  </code></pre>