Subject: Re: bug#62958: [PATCH] Set PAGER=cat in comint.el

From: Philip Kaludercic <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 26 Apr 2023 07:54:34 +0000

Eli Zaretskii <[email-masked]> writes:

>> From: Spencer Baugh <[email-masked]>
>> Date: Wed, 19 Apr 2023 17:57:38 -0400
>> 
>> Simply adding (setenv "PAGER" "cat") globally is not correct, since
>> that will break modes like term, which support paging quite well.
>> It's only and exactly the comint-derived modes which don't need
>> paging.
>> 
>> Changing the default to "cat" in this way might be a bit
>> controversial...
>
> Sorry, this default cannot be universally correct.  You assume that
> 'cat' is always available, which is not true on non-Posix platforms.
> So at the very least the value should be set according to
> executable-find.

What systems respect PAGER (and would have it presumably set to
something like less), but would not provide cat?