How do I prevent git diff from using a pager

Question

Is there a command line switch to pass to git diff and other commands that use the less pager by default   I know I can pipe it to cat  but that removes all the syntax highlighting   I know I can set the pager in the global  gitconfig to cat by GITPAGER cat  or something like that   but I want to have pager sometimes  depending on the size of the diff    But  I would prefer a command line switch if there is one  and I am not able to find one  going through the man pages

User · Answer

Use  git config --global core pager cat   to get rid of a pager for all commands for all repositories   You can also disable paging for single Git subcommands by using pager  lt cmd gt  setting instead of core pager  and you can change your settings per Git repository  omit --global    See man git-config and search for pager  lt cmd gt  for details

User · Answer

By default git uses uses less as pager  I normally prefer more  as it will print the first page and then allow you to scroll through the content   Further  the content will remain in the console when done  This is usually convenient  as you often want to do something with the content after lookup  eg   email the commiter and tell him he introduced a bug in his last commit    If you then want to pipe content  it would be inconvenient to scroll to print everything  The good thing with more is you will be able to combine it with pipeline and it will pipe through everything  eg     Find the commit abcdef123 in the full commit history and read author and commit message git log  grep -C 5  abcdef123    Basically more is all you would ever need  unless you do not want the content to remain in the console when done  To use more instead  do as below   git config --global core pager  more

User · Answer

You can disable enable pagers for specific outputs in the global configuration as well   git config --global pager diff false   Or to set the core pager option  just provide an empty string   git config --global core pager      This is better in my opinion than setting it to cat as you say

User · Answer

I like to disable paging from time to time  when I know the output is not very long  For this  I found a neat trick using Git aliases   git config --global --add alias n   git --no-pager    Or add the following to the  alias  section of    gitconfig   n    git --no-pager   This means that you can use the prefix n to turn off paging for any Git command  i e    git n diff   Show the diff without pager git n log -n 3   Show the last three commits without pager git n show v1 1   Show information about a tag

User · Answer

For Windows it is   git config --global core pager      This will turn off paging for everything in git  including the super annoying one in git branch

User · Answer

You can add an alias to diff with its own pager with pager alias  like so    alias    dc   diff   dsc   diff --staged  pager    dc   cat   dsc   cat   This will keep the color on and use  cat  as the pager when invoked at  git dc    Also  things not to do    use --no-pager in your alias  Git  1 8 5 2  Apple Git-48  will complain that you are trying to modify the environment  use a shell with  sh or  git  This will bypass the environment error  above  but it will reset your working directory  for the purposes of this command  to the top-level Git directory  so any references to a local file will not work if you are already in a subdirectory of your repository

User · Answer

I have this hunk in my  gitconfig and it seems to work fine  disabled for both diff and show     pager      diff   false     show   false

User · Answer

Just follow below instructions    Just type vi    gitconfig in your terminal  Paste LESS  -F -X  LESS  line  Press  wq and enter  Restart your terminal

User · Answer

git -P diff   Or --no-pager   BTW  To preserve colour with cat  git diff --color always   cat

User · Answer

The recent changes in the documentation mention a different way of removing a default option for less   default options  being FRSX    For this question  this would be  git 1 8    git config --global --replace-all core pager  less - F - X    For example  Dirk Bester suggests in the comments   export LESS   LESS -FRXK        so that I get colored diff with Ctrl-C quit from less    Wilson F mentions in the comments and in his question that      less supports horizontal scrolling  so when lines are chopped off  less disables quit-if-one-screen so that the user can still scroll the text to the left to see what was cut off      Those modifications were already visible in git 1 8 x  as illustrated in  Always use the pager for git diff   see the comments    But the documentation just got reworded  for git 1 8 5 or 1 9  Q4 2013         Text viewer for use by Git commands  e g    less      The value is meant to be interpreted by the shell         The order of preference is          the  GIT PAGER environment variable     then core pager configuration     then  PAGER     and then the default chosen at compile time  usually  less            When the LESS environment variable is unset  Git sets it to FRSX    if LESS environment variable is set  Git does not change it at all          If you want to selectively override Git s default setting for LESS  you can set core pager to e g  less - S    This will be passed to the shell by Git  which will translate the final command to LESS FRSX less - S  The environment tells the command to set the S option to chop long lines but the command line resets it to the default to fold long lines       See commit 97d01f2a for the reason behind the new documentation wording   config  rewrite core pager documentation     The text mentions core pager and GIT PAGER without giving the overall picture of precedence   Borrow a better description from the git var 1  documentation       The use of the mechanism to allow system-wide  global and per-repository configuration files is not limited to this particular variable   Remove it to clarify the paragraph       Rewrite the part that explains how the environment variable LESS is set to Git s default value  and how to selectively customize it      Note  commit b327583  Matthieu Moy moy  April 2014  for git 2 0 x 2 1  Q3 2014  will remove the S by default   pager  remove  S  from  LESS by default     By default  Git used to set  LESS to -FRSX if  LESS was not set by the user    The FRX flags actually make sense for Git  F and X because sometimes the output Git pipes to less is short  and R because Git pipes colored output     The S flag  chop long lines   on the other hand  is not related to Git and is a matter of user preference  Git should not decide for the user to change LESS s default       More specifically  the S flag harms users who review untrusted code within a pager  since a patch looking like   -old code   new good code       lots of tabs      malicious code        would appear identical to   -old code   new good code        Users who prefer the old behavior can still set the  LESS environment variable to -FRSX explicitly  or set core pager to  less -S     The documentation will read      The environment does not set the S option but the command line does  instructing less to truncate long lines    Similarly  setting core pager to less - F will deactivate the F option specified by the environment from the command-line  deactivating the  quit if one screen  behavior of less    One can specifically activate some flags for particular commands  for example  setting pager blame to less -S enables line truncation only for git blame

User · Answer

For a quick-and-dirty script I wrote  I did it this way   PAGER cat git diff

User · Answer

If you use the oh-my-zsh  in the    oh-my-zsh lib misc zsh file  comment this line   env default  LESS   -R

User · Answer

As a previous answer mentioned  passing the -F option to less causes it to quit if the content is less than one screen  However  after doing so  the screen is reset  and you end up not seeing the content   The -X option does away with that behaviour  So  I use the following to enable conditional paging based on the amount of content   git config --global --replace-all core pager  less -F -X

User · Answer

As it says on man git  you can use --no-pager on any command   I use it on   git --no-pager diff git --no-pager log --oneline --graph --decorate --all -n 10   Then use an alias to avoid using  and remembering  long commands

User · Answer

This worked for me with Git version 2 1 4 on Linux   git config --global --replace-all core pager cat   This makes Git use cat instead of less  cat just dumps the output of diff to the screen without any paging

User · Answer

--no-pager to Git will tell it to not use a pager  Passing the option -F to less will tell it to not page if the output fits in a single screen   Usage   git --no-pager diff   Other options from the comments include     Set an evaporating environment variable to use  cat  for your pager GIT PAGER cat git diff    Tells  less  not to paginate if less than a page export LESS  -F -X  LESS       then Git as usual git diff

User · Answer

Regarding the disabled color when piping   Use --color to avoid that coloring is disabled   git diff --color   less -R  Or configure it forced on  in e g   gitconfig     color          ui   on   git diff   less -R  For non-color tools  then use   git diff --no-color   some-primitive-tool  Exporting environment variable LESS -R  in e g   bashrc  turns on color support by default in  less    git diff   less

[git] How do I prevent 'git diff' from using a pager?

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