On 30Apr2016 23:46, Random832 <random...@fastmail.com> wrote:
On Sat, Apr 30, 2016, at 22:30, Grant Edwards wrote:
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.
Setting PAGER=cat - permanently, in your profile, and never ever
changing it - gives this result, yet it's described by some people here
as "So I have to cripple my shell [...]?" What is crippled? Evidently
you're not "we", since this "crippled" state of affairs seems to be a
perfectly acceptable one to you.
This is an interesting argument.
Yes, PAGER=cat would make "man" also not page, and likely almost everything.
And yet I am unwilling to do so. Why?
On reflection, my personal problems with this approach are twofold:
- I want $PAGER to specify my preferred pager when I do want a pager, so
setting it to "cat" does not inform apps about my wishes
- in an interactive shell, yes I can type "| less"; it seems painful (oh for
the happy days of yore when this was spelt "|pg":-)
I am going to try PAGER=cat as an experiment to seem how it feels. Now, I _do_
wish "man" to page for a number of reasons (a) my brain expects it (b) I like
the nice colour highlighting of headings etc (c) manual pages and other
_lengthy_ documents _are_ better paged than not. This last is in contrast to
"help" messages, even lengthy usage messages: these are short enough that I
feel they should not be paged, and if I come across a glaring exception i can
always page them myself.
Fortunately for me, I am already in the position of mucking with "man"; my
despite for GNU info with its weird non-paging browser and the accompanying GNU
manual pages which all too frequently say "man is defunct, go look in info - we
don't bother with man" drove me to rewrite "man" to try to suck in info files
into flat pagable text. So telling my shell this:
man(){ PAGER=less command man ${1+"$@"}; }
is no hardship.
I'll give this a go and see how it feels.
Cheers,
Cameron Simpson <c...@zip.com.au>
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