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> I was trying to
> address the issue of pydoc noisily informing me that 'less' was
> not available.

Right, yeah -- but the point i was trying to make is that it's
not just a simple matter of "this feature is missing because
the author never thought of it, so we'll just add it".
There's something more subtle going on here.

I tested it when i originally wrote it and i tested it again
now, and it works fine if my system doesn't have 'less'
(it tries 'more', and failing that it just dumps the text out
straight).  Looking at the code, i can't explain the
behaviour you're getting.  Have you figured out why
you're getting an error message?

About the patch, specifically: i'm generally skeptical
of doing this kind of LBYL test where the test is
different from the actual action needed.  What we
need to know is whether os.system('less') will
succeed, not whether you can find a file named 'less'
on the path with a particular mode.  Finding the
executable is the operating system's business.
I'd prefer to do a test run of os.system('less') and
notice whether that succeeds or fails (which is what
it currently does -- but for some reason it doesn't
work correctly in your setup, and should be made
more robust).