On 2016-05-01, Random832 <random...@fastmail.com> wrote: > On Sat, Apr 30, 2016, at 19:51, c...@zip.com.au wrote: >> _When_ they want a pager. > > Why would they need an environment variable at all in that case, rather > than explicitly invoking the pager by name?
We don't want to use a PAGER variable to specify when we want a pager and when we don't want a pager. If we want a pager we append "| less" to the command. If we don't want a pager, we don't append that to the command. For historical reasons, "man" invokes a pager by default. I'm not crazy about that. If you want to argue that it's being inconsistent then you're right: man shouldn't invoke a pager either. -- Grant -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list