30

What is the default PAGER used by man pages.

I,e what is the program runs the man pages?

It look some like more or less. I'm sure it's not more since more doesn't support reverse backward.

Maythux
  • 87,123

2 Answers2

31

From man man:

                                                  ... The pager can  be
specified  in  a number of ways, or else will fall back to a default is
used (see option -P for details). 

...
-P pager, --pager=pager
       Specify  which  output pager to use.  By default, man uses pager
       -s.  This option overrides the $MANPAGER  environment  variable,
       which  in turn overrides the $PAGER environment variable.  It is
       not used in conjunction with -f or -k.

pager (/usr/bin/pager) is set using the Debian alternatives system (via /etc/alternatives/pager), and defaults to less.

$ update-alternatives --display pager
pager - auto mode
  link currently points to /bin/less
/bin/less - priority 77
  slave pager.1.gz: /usr/share/man/man1/less.1.gz
/bin/more - priority 50
  slave pager.1.gz: /usr/share/man/man1/more.1.gz
/usr/bin/pg - priority 10
  slave pager.1.gz: /usr/share/man/man1/pg.1.gz
/usr/bin/w3m - priority 25
  slave pager.1.gz: /usr/share/man/man1/w3m.1.gz
Current 'best' version is '/bin/less'.

Apparently, this particular default (using a command named pager) is a Debian-derivative trait. See Which systems have 'pager' shortcut/alias? over on Unix & Linux.

Community
  • 1
muru
  • 207,228
21

By default, it's less. As explained in man man:

-P pager, --pager=pager

Specify which output pager to use. By default, man uses pager
-s. This option overrides the $MANPAGER environment variable, which in turn overrides the $PAGER environment variable. It is not used in conjunction with -f or -k.

The value may be a simple command name or a command with argu‐
ments, and may use shell quoting (backslashes, single quotes, or
double quotes). It may not use pipes to connect multiple com‐
mands; if you need that, use a wrapper script, which may take the file to display either as an argument or on standard input.

On Debian-based systems, including Ubuntu, pager is a symlink to less:

$ readlink -f /usr/bin/pager 
/bin/less

This means that man's default, pager -s, is less -s. You can change this by i) using the -P option of man; ii) setting the MANPAGER or PAGER environmental variables.

terdon
  • 104,119