If I do less somefile.txt or man bash (which uses less internally), it displays the content, but after pressing Q, the content disappears.
git diff also uses less, but the output remains in console. How can I make git act the same as man?
Current behavior
me@mypc:~$ git diff
# I look at the diff and then press q. But it's all printed to the console
diff --git a/somefile.txt b/somefile.txt
...
...
...
me@mypc:~$
me@mypc:~$ less somefile.txt
# I look at the file content, but after I press q, console appears and nothing is printed there
me@mypc:~$
I realized that the git behavior is like less -X, so how can I force git to run less without that option?
This is the effect of less -F -X; see core.pager in git-config(1).
From less(1):
-F or --quit-if-one-screen
Causes less to automatically exit if the entire file can be dis‐
played on the first screen.
-X or --no-init
Disables sending the termcap initialization and deinitialization
strings to the terminal. This is sometimes desirable if the
deinitialization string does something unnecessary, like clear‐
ing the screen.
Part of the "init" mentioned here involves switching to the alternate screen, so that the main screen is preserved.
From git-config(1):
core.pager
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 FRX (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=FRX
less -S. 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.
Likewise, when the LV environment variable is unset, Git sets it to
-c. You can override this setting by exporting LV with another
value or setting core.pager to lv +c.