Re: Bug#363250: general: Custom PAGER gives error on sid, but works on sarge

[Henning Makholm <henning@makholm.net>]

Scripsit Loïc Minier <lool+debian@via.ecp.fr>

>  I suggest you use:
>     export PAGER="sh -c \"col -b | view -c 'set ft=man nomod nolist titlestring=MANPAGE' -\""
>
>  which explicitely calls sh -c to handle pipes and quotes in the
>  expected way.

Policy does not really specify how to handle $PAGER and its friends,
but I have always assumed that it was OK for a package to do things
like (error checking omitted for clarity):

    if( fork() == 0 ) {
        char *pager = getenv("PAGER");
        if( pager == NULL ) pager = "/usr/bin/pager" ;
        execlp(getenv("PAGER"),filename,NULL);
    }
    wait(NULL);

In that case, PAGER has to be set to just the name of a program, with
no parameters or metacharacters embedded.

>  You may also use your own /usr/local/bin/pager with:
>     #!/bin/sh

>     col -b | view -c 'set ft=man nomod nolist titlestring=MANPAGE' -
>  and with PAGER=/usr/local/bin/pager.

I think that is the more robust way for a user to do such things, and
the way that should be documented.

>  I am reassigning to man for the man manpage to be clarified with
>  respect to the way $PAGER is called.

Is this a man-specific problem? I would say it is a general problem of
policy being vague.

-- 
Henning Makholm           "There were few families that didn't have at least
                         one hopeful who, from Reading Day on, was the great
                       hope because of the way he handled his trisyllabics."