history isn't shown if the terminal is too tall and the PAGER is less

[pmoody-]

shell:
fish, version 3.3.1

os:
ProductName: Mac OS X
ProductVersion: 10.15.7
BuildVersion: 19H1217

TERM:
xterm-256color

if I have a "tall" terminal, when I run history -c foo, if there are fewer entries than lines in my terminal and my pager is set to less, the pager immediately exits.

this is weird, so an example:

$ set -x PAGER less
$ tput lines
28
$ history -c foo | wc -l
      26
$ time history -c foo

________________________________________________________
Executed in   20.90 millis    fish           external
   usr time   20.11 millis   19.03 millis    1.08 millis
   sys time    3.31 millis    1.13 millis    2.18 millis

$ set -x PAGER more
$ time history -c foo
...
<all lines of history -c foo shown>
...
________________________________________________________
Executed in    1.69 secs      fish           external
   usr time   20.05 millis   18.91 millis    1.14 millis
   sys time    3.66 millis    1.34 millis    2.32 millis

$

I'm using omf, but I've confirmed that the behavior exists with omf uninstalled. I've also tried in both iterm and terminal.app

if I make the terminal shorter, like 26 or even 27 lines, then the default PAGER of less works. I've also confirmed that something like,

$ cat <file-with-25-entries> | less

works as well. it's something about the interaction between fish and less that breaks. I don't have an exact version where this seems to have started, but I think this was working in the april timeframe.

Also, this seems to work fine on linux, fish version 3.2.2

[faho]

if I have a "tall" terminal, when I run history -c foo, if there are fewer entries than lines in my terminal and my pager is set to less, the pager immediately exits.

Yes, we tell less to quit if it's only one screen, by setting $LESS to --quit-if-one-screen.

This should leave the text simply on the screen. Is that not happening?

Can you try

echo foo | LESS=--quit-if-one-screen less

Does that show "foo" on screen, without leaving less running?

[pmoody-]

No, for some reason that's not happening on my system. I can tell that something is getting displayed b/c the screen will flicker sometimes, but no text is left.

$ less --version
less 487 (POSIX regular expressions)
Copyright (C) 1984-2016  Mark Nudelman

less comes with NO WARRANTY, to the extent permitted by law.
For information about the terms of redistribution,
see the file named README in the less distribution.
Homepage: http://www.greenwoodsoftware.com/less

$ echo foo | LESS=--quit-if-one-screen less
$ history -c foo
$

[faho]

Okay, this looks like a bug in either less or your terminal.

less 487 (POSIX regular expressions)

Yeah, that's a less from shortly after the stoneage. The current version is 590.

I suggest you try updating that.

[pmoody-]

$ echo foo | LESS=-F less
$

Yeah, that's a less from shortly after the stoneage. The current version is 590.
I suggest you try updating that.

ack.

[pmoody-]

alright, I brew installed less (version 590) and now it works.

$ echo foo | LESS=-F less
foo
$ echo foo | LESS=--quit-if-one-screen less
foo

🎉

Thanks!

[ridiculousfish]

I decided to fix this by checking the version of less, since it's just broken on macOS otherwise.