man command question

[Cameron Simpson]

On 09Mar2014 21:41, g <geleem at bellsouth.net> wrote:
> being that no one asked, i will.
> why would someone send a man page to a null device?
> to a printer, file, another terminal, yes. /dev/null, never.

The same reason one might send anything to /dev/null; to execise
the command without keeping the output. Test frameworks, etc etc.

> because intent of 'man' is not to send output to /dev/null,
> why should it written to do so?

It should have a sensible default when it doesn't know the output
width by inspection. For example, when piped to something else.

> such is not intent of 'man', therefore, i would not consider
> doing such as a bug. other than person doing so. ;-)

The only way to support a default width but still have it break on
/dev/null (as you seem to want it to) is to special case /dev/null
and detect it specificly, and perform badly in that special occasion.

That seems insane.
-- 
Cameron Simpson <cs at zip.com.au>

Your modesty is typically human, so I will overlook it. - a Klingon