Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP
Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!munnari!mimir!wacsvax!chris
From: chris@wacsvax.OZ (chris mcdonald)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.wizards
Subject: Re: Pager in the shell
Message-ID: <720@wacsvax.OZ>
Date: Mon, 26-Oct-87 22:33:48 EST
Article-I.D.: wacsvax.720
Posted: Mon Oct 26 22:33:48 1987
Date-Received: Sat, 31-Oct-87 14:31:02 EST
References: <9779@brl-adm.ARPA> <504@tut.cis.ohio-state.edu> <590@ihdev.ATT.COM>
Reply-To: chris@wacsvax.uwa.oz.OZ (chris mcdonald)
Organization: Comp Sci, University of Western Australia
Lines: 27

> In article <590@ihdev.ATT.COM> pdg@ihdev.UUCP (Joe Isuzu) writes:
>
> >Re: the discussion of putting a pager in the shell.  This is not the
> >correct place.  The pager belongs in the terminal, and failing that, in
> >a streams module.

I think many of you are taking the wrong attitude to this request.
The title suggests that the pager should be placed in the shell, but the
original article just asked if the author could avoid typing '... | pg'
all the time. Yes, a pager does not belong in a shell, yes it may belong
in the terminal, but neither of these nagative criticisms are helping.

A reasonable solution is to introduce an extra environment variable into a
shell, eg PAGER. Then if PAGER is defined, to say 'pg' or 'less' and if
stdout (and possibly stderr) of each command in the foreground is not
redirected, the *the shell* can arrange these file descriptors to go to
$PAGER (or perhaps issue 'stty -page' if installed). I have not added this
to any shell, but I can see it as a reasonable addition.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Chris McDonald.

Department of Computer Science,       CSNet:  chris@wacsvax.oz
University of Western Australia,      ARPA:   chris%wacsvax.oz@uunet.uu.net
Mounts Bay Road,                      UUCP:   ..!uunet!munnari!wacsvax!chris
Crawley, Western Australia, 6009.
PHONE:  (09) 380 2305                 OVERSEAS: +61 9 380 2305