When viewing messages with "pat read", open them in a pager such as less

[bseidenberg]

... Rather than relying on the terminal's scrollback. This ensures that the start of the email is the first line, rather than something near the end if the whole thing dumps to the terminal immediately.

[DC7IA]

Pagers are more or less a good idea, at least in most cases.

“less is more, but more more than more is, so more is less less, so use more less if you want less more. (...) If less is more than more, most is more than less.”

­— Slackware Linux Essential

We should not assume that users want to use less, but first read $PAGER, for example on my system:

$ echo $PAGER
most

[DC7IA]

Oh and please make sure the pager isn't used when pat is used inside a script.