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? To me, *not* having PAGER=cat signifies that someone *does* want a pager. That may be a crappy convention, but it's the one we're stuck with. > And setting PAGER=cat before invoking interactive python is no better, > because > it will screw with $PAGER in any subprocess spawned from that > environment. But why would you not *also* want PAGER=cat in those subprocesses? You don't want those things to spawn pagers that you haven't asked explicitly for, either, right? I don't get the "It's terrible if I run man or git it won't open a pager, but I don't want pydoc to use a pager" viewpoint. It just doesn't make any sense to me. > Let me recite one of my favourite rules of thumb: > > If it can't be turned off, it's not a feature. - Karl Heuer You turn it off by setting PAGER=cat. The fact that pydoc uses a pager is the *same* feature as the fact that git and man do. -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
