Re: [PATCH 5/5] run-command: Error out if interpreter not found

(+cc: Jeff because mentioning a pagination side-issue [*]) Frans Klaver wrote:

Almost always when a developer has an itch, it is _possible_ to massage a patch that scratches it into something acceptable to others. And whether it is worth the trouble in terms of time is something that only that developer can decide.

So no, I would not say these patches were not doomed from the beginning. However, I certainly agree that in their current form they are more complicated than the use case justifies.

There is a tension between requirements that leaves me oddly uncomfortable with the series:

a. on one hand, it would be nice to preserve all the current features
   of execvp(), which makes the approach of only doing post-mortem
   analysis after a failed execvp appealing;

b. on the other hand, it would be nice [*] to avoid launching a pager
   only in order to call execvp for a command that does not exist when
   the fallback might be to an alias to a command that does not want a
   pager.  That would require figuring out in advance that execvp
   would fail with ENOENT and missing out on possible system extensions
   that allow execvp to run shell built-in commands not existing on
   the filesystem.

I want to like (b), but the downside seems unacceptable. I honestly don't know if something like (a) would be a good idea if well executed, so I was happy to have the opportunity to try to help massage these patches into a form that would make the answer more obvious.