Variable: comint-pager

comint-pager is a customizable variable defined in comint.el.gz.

Value

nil

Documentation

If non-nil, the program to use for pagination of program output.

If nil, use the default pager.

Some programs produce large amounts of output, and have provision for pagination of their output through a filter program, commonly known as a "pager". The pager limits the amount of output produced and allows the user to interactively browse the output one page at a time. Some programs paginate their output by default, by always starting a pager. The program they use as the pager is specified by the environment variable PAGER; if that variable is not defined, they use some fixed default, such as "less".

The interactive browsing aspects of pagination are not needed, and get in the way, when the output of the program is directed to an Emacs buffer, so in those cases pagination might need to be disabled. Disabling pagination means that some programs will produce large amounts of output, but most such programs have other ways to limit their output, such as additional arguments or Emacs interfaces. To disable pagination, this variable's value should be a string that names a program, such as "cat", which passes through all of the output without any filtering or delays. Comint will then set the PAGER variable to name that program, when it invokes external programs.

This variable was added, or its default value changed, in Emacs 30.1.

Source Code

;; Defined in /usr/src/emacs/lisp/comint.el.gz
(defcustom comint-pager nil
  "If non-nil, the program to use for pagination of program output.
If nil, use the default pager.

Some programs produce large amounts of output, and have provision for
pagination of their output through a filter program, commonly known as
a \"pager\".  The pager limits the amount of output produced and
allows the user to interactively browse the output one page at a time.
Some programs paginate their output by default, by always starting a
pager.  The program they use as the pager is specified by the
environment variable PAGER; if that variable is not defined, they use
some fixed default, such as \"less\".

The interactive browsing aspects of pagination are not needed, and get
in the way, when the output of the program is directed to an Emacs
buffer, so in those cases pagination might need to be disabled.
Disabling pagination means that some programs will produce large
amounts of output, but most such programs have other ways to limit
their output, such as additional arguments or Emacs interfaces.
To disable pagination, this variable's value should be a string that
names a program, such as \"cat\", which passes through all of the
output without any filtering or delays.  Comint will then set the
PAGER variable to name that program, when it invokes external
programs."
  :version "30.1"
  :type '(choice (const :tag "Use default PAGER" nil)
                 (const :tag "Don't do paging (PAGER=cat)" "cat")
                 (string :tag "Program name or absolute path of pager"))
  :group 'comint)