Indeed, I know and expect that less does all that, but it would not have been a problem if the sqlite shell would wait until there is some output to display before invoking the external command. It would also have to wait for the command to finish before printing a new prompt and trying to read user input once more. But never mind: Now that I know it is not expected to work, I can find other ways. I imagine others might expect the same behaviour I did, though, so perhaps it could deserve a mention in the documentation.