Why do I have to hit 'Q' at the end of 'git log'?

Question

Consider:

git log -n 20 --pretty=oneline

I am telling Git that I need to see only the last 20 commits. I hate to hit Q to get ri

Answer 1

You can "turn off" git paging by telling it to use cat instead of less. Thereafter, pipe the output through less when you do want paging, or head if you just want to see the top, etc.

git config --global core.pager cat

I turn off automatic paging because I often run git from within emacs, which neither needs nor plays well with less.