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Unix Man Pages

Getting On-line Help in/on Unix

Overview

Getting on-line help in Unix can be very frustrating.
The Unix man command is used to get on-line help and documentation. Sure, it should be called help, but it has always been called man (short for "manual") and knowing this little secret is a first step toward entering the Guild.
Not only does it provide on-line information on Unix commands, it also provides information on C functions (e.g., printf) in the standard libraries (e.g., stdio).
There are two main forms to using man:
- getting information on the command or function named X
- finding out which commands or functions are associated with keyword X
There is more to the man command -- do a "man man" if you're curious.

Information on command/function X

Simply executing "man name " does the trick:

% man pine
...output...

% man printf
...output...

% man man
...output...

Information on command/function with keyword X

Use the -k flag to give a keyword, as in "man -k keyword "


% man -k email
...output...

% man -k mail
...output...

[an error occurred while processing this directive] Sunday, 21-Aug-2005 09:53:49 EDT