[TUHS] man-page style

Warner Losh imp at bsdimp.com
Sat Nov 17 04:00:59 AEST 2018


On Fri, Nov 16, 2018 at 9:56 AM Paul Winalski <paul.winalski at gmail.com>
wrote:

>  agree with Grant.  If you want to know what a particular command
> does and what its options are, man pages are fantastic.  If you are a
> new or casual user trying to find out what command(s) to use to
> accomplish a particular task, the man pages are an exercise in
> frustration and futility.  Other OSes have done a better job in that
> area (the VMS and DTSS HELP commands come to mind).  IMO ideally one
> should have both--a generalized "help" command for those trying to
> find out what command to use, and "man" as reference material.  UNIX
> and Linux have never had a proper help facility.  Or at least I never
> was able to find it.
>

I've often wanted a 'man -v' which printed a more-verbose version of the
man page, if it were available, otherwise the standard one for
less-often-used commands that are a pita learn at the start, but once you
learn you just want a quick refresher.

Pike could then do a paper 'make -v considered harmful' :)

Warner
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