turn-off-the-output-pager-for-one-command.md

Turn Off The Output Pager For One Command

With git a pager, such as less, can be configured to display paginated command output. There are many ways to set up the default pager such as setting the core.pager value in your git-config or by setting the $PAGER env var.

Assuming it is set to something like less, you can view, scroll through, and search the output of a command like git log or git diff. When you're finished the pager will close, all the output will vanish, and you'll be back at your terminal prompt.

This is generally a desirable workflow. If, however, you want to be able to scroll back in your terminal history to reference a SHA or a commit message, you'll be disappointed.

For one off commands where you know you'll want the output actually printed to the terminal, you can turn off the pager with the --no-pager flag (or -P as a shorthand).

$ git --no-pager show

This will print the details of the HEAD commit to the terminal. I can scroll back and reference them as needed.

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