[aklug] Re: Geeky Topic of the Week: man pages

apropos will search the name and description of each program's man page.

man -K will search for a string in all man page content (but "man man"
warns that this is very slow).

m.

On Fri, Jul 9, 2010 at 1:40 PM, Christopher Howard <choward@indicium.us> wr=
ote:
> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
> Hash: SHA1
>
> Let me say, starting off, that this topic is proffered to the list
> primarily to spark discussion and flame wars, rather than provide an
> actual commitment to productivity. (Thereby making this a truly geeky
> discussion according to the usual orthodox qualifications.)
>
> So, most of us have had this experience, have we not?
>
> =A01. We want to do XYZ in Linux
> =A02. We Google XYZ. (No satisfying answer.)
> =A03. We make a post to a Linux forum about XYZ.
> =A04. A day later, somebody replies to the thread with an answer like so:
>
> You !@#!@$ idiot! RTFM! Any idiot can see that the answer is on line 457
> of the XYZ-UTIL(1) man page. Stop being a lazy #$!@# and do you homework
> first!
>
> And we are left thinking "I didn't even know there was an XYZ-UTIL man
> page," or "Jeepers, I read the XYZ-UTIL man page, but somehow I missed
> that note in line 457."
>
> So, maybe we need to write some kind of man page search engine, which
> would allow you to "Google" all the man page content on your system? Or
> maybe the man page system itself is flawed?
>
> - --
> Christopher Howard
> http://indicium.us
> http://theologia.indicium.us
>
> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
> Version: GnuPG v2.0.14 (GNU/Linux)
> Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org/
>
> iEYEARECAAYFAkw3lzIACgkQQ5FLNdi0BcXwcQCghioTWDob7NJO23YZvYNIxQ8r
> +i0An3qOODljPJZRp1pV1LE/Gg6BkgZG
> =3DTRcD
> -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
> ---------
> To unsubscribe, send email to <aklug-request@aklug.org>
> with 'unsubscribe' in the message body.
>
>
---------
To unsubscribe, send email to <aklug-request@aklug.org>
with 'unsubscribe' in the message body.
Received on Fri Jul 9 13:48:28 2010