Add Turn Off Output Pager For A Command as an AWS TIL

README.md

@@ -10,7 +10,7 @@ pairing with smart people at Hashrocket.
 
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@@ -116,6 +116,7 @@ If you've learned something here, support my efforts writing daily TILs by
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 - [Sign Up User With Email And Password](aws/sign-up-user-with-email-and-password.md)
 - [SSH Into An ECS Container](aws/ssh-into-an-ecs-container.md)
+- [Turn Off Output Pager For A Command](aws/turn-off-output-pager-for-a-command.md)
 - [Use Specific AWS Profile With CLI](aws/use-specific-aws-profile-with-cli.md)
 
 ### Brew

aws/turn-off-output-pager-for-a-command.md

@@ -0,0 +1,38 @@
+# Turn Off Output Pager For A Command
+
+It is not uncommon for an AWS CLI command to return a ton of output. When that
+happens, it is nice that the results end up in pager program (like `less`)
+where you can search and review them, copy a value of interest, and then exit.
+The pager prevents that wall of output from cluttering your terminal history.
+
+However, sometimes I am running a command that I know is going to return a
+small result. I'd rather have the results go to stdout where I can see them in
+the terminal history rather than to an ephemeral pager.
+
+For that situation I can tack on the `--no-cli-pager` flag.
+
+```bash
+$ aws rds describe-db-instances \
+  --query 'DBInstances[*].EngineVersion' \
+  --output json \
+  --no-cli-pager
+
+[
+    "13.15",
+    "16.8"
+]
+```
+
+Here I've asked the AWS CLI to tell me the engine versions of all my RDS
+Postgres databases. Because I know the results are only going to include a
+couple results for my couple of DBs, I'd like to skip the pager —
+`--no-cli-pager`.
+
+Though I think it is better to do this on a case by case basis, it is also
+possible to turn off the pager via the CLI configuration file.
+
+```bash
+$ aws configure set cli_pager ""
+```
+
+[source](https://docs.aws.amazon.com/cli/latest/userguide/cli-usage-pagination.html#cli-usage-pagination-clientside)