From 179632453178a486796a4b1e765d3fd2172bae5a Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001
From: Keith Hall <keith-hall@users.noreply.github.com>
Date: Wed, 3 Dec 2025 22:36:41 +0200
Subject: [PATCH] Fix --help --pager=builtin

Previously it still used less
---
 CHANGELOG.md       |  2 ++
 src/bin/bat/app.rs | 10 ++++------
 2 files changed, 6 insertions(+), 6 deletions(-)

diff --git a/CHANGELOG.md b/CHANGELOG.md
index 86f5bc26..fdd67981 100644
--- a/CHANGELOG.md
+++ b/CHANGELOG.md
@@ -4,6 +4,8 @@
 
 ## Bugfixes
 
+- `--help` now correctly honors `--pager=builtin`. See #3516 (@keith-hall)
+
 ## Other
 
 ## Syntaxes
diff --git a/src/bin/bat/app.rs b/src/bin/bat/app.rs
index bdfca75e..da1f0166 100644
--- a/src/bin/bat/app.rs
+++ b/src/bin/bat/app.rs
@@ -110,7 +110,7 @@ impl App {
                 _ => interactive_output, // auto: use color if interactive
             };
 
-            let custom_pager = matches.get_one::<String>("pager").map(|s| s.to_string());
+            let pager = matches.get_one::<String>("pager").map(|s| s.as_str());
             let theme_options = Self::theme_options_from_matches(&matches);
 
             Self::display_help(
@@ -118,7 +118,7 @@ impl App {
                 help_type,
                 use_pager,
                 use_color,
-                custom_pager,
+                pager,
                 theme_options,
             )?;
             std::process::exit(0);
@@ -136,7 +136,7 @@ impl App {
         help_type: HelpType,
         use_pager: bool,
         use_color: bool,
-        custom_pager: Option<String>,
+        pager: Option<&str>,
         theme_options: ThemeOptions,
     ) -> Result<()> {
         use crate::assets::assets_from_cache_or_binary;
@@ -164,12 +164,10 @@ impl App {
             PagingMode::Never
         };
 
-        let pager = bat::config::get_pager_executable(custom_pager.as_deref());
-
         let help_config = Config {
             style_components: StyleComponents::new(StyleComponent::Plain.components(false)),
             paging_mode,
-            pager: pager.as_deref(),
+            pager,
             colored_output: use_color,
             true_color: use_color,
             language: if use_color { Some("help") } else { None },