[darcs-users] darcs-2 help behavior

[Trent W. Buck]

Juliusz Chroboczek <Juliusz.Chroboczek at pps.jussieu.fr> writes:

>> Is the contents of LESS supposed to be just broken at whitespace, or
>> actually interpreted by the shell?
>
> POSIX.1-2001 appears to contradict itself.  The description of the man
> command says:

Referring to a later edition, "IEEE Std 1003.1, 2004 Edition",

>   PAGER Determine an output filtering command for writing the output to
>         a terminal. Any string acceptable as a command_string operand to the
>         sh -c command shall be valid. When standard output is a terminal
>         device, the reference page output shall be piped through the command.
>         If the PAGER variable is null or not set, the command shall be either
>         more or another paginator utility documented in the system
>         documentation.

is unchanged.
http://www.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/009695399/utilities/man.html
However,

> but the description of the mailx command says
>
>   PAGER Pathname of the program to use in the more command or when crt
>         variable is set.  The default paginator pg(1) or, in BSD
>         compatibility mode, more(1) is used if this option is not defined.

This now agrees with the former instance that PAGER be
passed to sh -c.
http://www.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/009695399/utilities/mailx.html

    PAGER
        Determine a string representing an output filtering
        or pagination command for writing the output to the
        terminal. Any string acceptable as a command_string
        operand to the sh -c command shall be valid. When
        standard output is a terminal device, the message
        output shall be piped through the command if the
        mailx internal variable crt is set to a value less
        the number of lines in the message; see Internal
        Variables in mailx. If the PAGER variable is null or
        not set, the paginator shall be either more or
        another paginator utility documented in the system
        documentation. The effects of this variable are
        unspecified if the User Portability Utilities option
        is not supported.

> I would recommend we go with the man interpretation, i.e. that PAGER
> is passed to ``sh -c''.

In light of these findings, I withdraw my earlier recommentation and
agree with Juliusz; let it be interpreted by sh.