git pager=cat missing a newline at the end

Question

I've set core.pager=cat, however it doesn't insert a newline at the end of the output, so that the new prompt appears on the same line as the last line of git's output.

How can I fix that?

example:

Lohoris@Pelociccio /cygdrive/d/work/MixArt$ git lo
* d42d527 2012-05-14 18:58:38 +0200 | Hidden: diff_find e diff_shown (XDK: v0.0.8) (HEAD, origin/master, master) [Lorenzo Petrone]
* 3829928 2012-05-14 18:28:38 +0200 | Hidden.diff_all (XDK: v0.0.7) [Lorenzo Petrone]
[...]
* 9a033bb 2012-05-14 10:35:29 +0200 | fix Hidden [Lorenzo Petrone]
* eb2d57d 2012-05-11 18:23:02 +0200 | crash() [Lorenzo Petrone]Lohoris@Pelociccio /cygdrive/d/work/MixArt$

notice how the new prompt is on the same line of the last git output line.

Answer 1

Your issue is with --pretty:format and not with your pager. You probably want to use tformat instead of format to provide the terminator semantics that you are looking for.

Try:

git log --pretty=tformat:"%h %ai | %s%d [%an]" --graph --date=short -n 12