On Mon, 18 Jun 2001, Alexander Skwar wrote:
>> I would consider defaulting to "less" to be very unportable
>> behavior despite the fact that Linux systems normally install
>> it, as most UNIX systems do not have "less" installed.
>
>Yes, that's true. I never said that 'more' should not be used - I merely
>said that the pager should default to less if PAGER is unset (as in RedHat
>6.2, Mandrake 7.2 and 8.0) and then, if less cannot be run, fallback to
>more, which most certainly is available.
That sounds sane to me. The only problem is guessing where it is
installed, or not specifying a path at all.
>My "problem" is, that on my system (Mandrake), PAGER is unset, and still
>less seems to be the default - however, could someone please tell me of
>another tool besides 'man' that silently calls the default pager? From what
"default pager" if PAGER is not set, is application defined
behavior. Most likely a compile time option in many
applications, or changed via patching on Linux systems.
>all of you have said here, I *VERY* much would like to check if less is
>really treated as the default inspite of PAGER being unset.
If no PAGER var is set, then whatever application calls the pager
has hardcoded either "less" or "more" into it. It isn't a system
wide thing per se. And definitely not a UNIX wide thing. Very
Linux specific behaviour.
I like the fact that less is the default in most Linux systems,
but it is not universal in UNIXland and should definitely not be
relied upon.
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