pin the first row when viewing a data table with a bash program such as less

I have a space-delimited file data.txt that I am reading with less:

less -S data.txt

I want the first row to stay pinned to the top of the terminal.

Is there a way to accomplish this in bash? It doesn't need to be using less, and it's fine if it requires defining a new bash function or alias.

I sometimes use Vim as a pager:

command | vim -

In Vim you can use <kbd>ctrl</kbd>+<kbd>w</kbd> <kbd>s</kbd> to split the screen vertically.

This has an annoying default to split the screen in half. You can give it a numeric prefix like <kbd>1</kbd> <kbd>ctrl</kbd>+<kbd>w</kbd> <kbd>s</kbd> to make the top split one line tall.

Use <kbd>ctrl</kbd>+<kbd>w</kbd> <kbd>w</kbd>, or <kbd>ctrl</kbd>+<kbd>w</kbd> <kbd>ctrl</kbd>+<kbd>w</kbd> to toggle between the splits.

This is all inconvenient to fiddle with manually each time you want a pager with a one-line split. Here is how to do it in a single command:

command | vi -c '1split | winc w' -

The -c tells Vim to run two commands after opening the file. The first one 1split creates a one line split at the top of the screen. The :winc w is the colon command way to execute a <kbd>ctrl</kbd>+<kbd>w</kbd> <kbd>w</kbd> to switch the cursor to the bottom split, so you're ready to scroll the main view.

Make an alias for the vi ... part like

alias vl='vi -c "1split | winc w" -'

and then it's easy to use as command | vl.