From: Peter H. Coffin (hellsop_at_ninehells.com)
Date: Thu Jan 30 2003 - 10:27:23 PST
On Thu, Jan 30, 2003 at 08:59:36AM -0500, Eric L. Strobel wrote:
> on 1/30/03 3:03 AM, Robert Benschop at rbenschop_at_euronet.nl wrote:
>
> >> It is extremely annoying when a person familiar with Unix gives a terse
> >> (and unusable) response as follows (below). It took me quite awhile,
> >> many years ago, to figure out how to use Unix because every Unix person
> >> told me to use the man pages. Which are pretty unhelpful.
> >
> > Ironically Patrick's comment made go into Terminal, past 'man curl' and
> > press return, and lo and behold, a full explanation.
>
> Actually, I've found the 'man' pages quite helpful -- IF you know what
> command you need! If you don't know the name of the command that you need
> to learn about, then 'man' is (obviously) useless. Admittedly, the last
> time I did Unix was on a Silly-G about 5 years ago, so maybe documentation
> has advanced, but I always thought 'man' needed a good topical index.
It's got one, called apropos, which is also callable with man -k
(keyword). for example, from my own system:
$ man -k ftp
ftp (1) - ARPANET file transfer program
ftpd (8) - Internet File Transfer Protocol server
sftp (1) - Secure file transfer program
sftp-server (8) - SFTP server subsystem
tftp (1) - trivial file transfer program
tftpd (8) - DARPA Trivial File Transfer Protocol server
Net::Cmd (3) - Network Command class (as used by FTP, SMTP etc)
Net::FTP (3) - FTP Client class
iis_ftp2dlf (1) - convert Microsoft Ftp Server Logs into DLF
ncftp (1) - Browser program for the File Transfer Protocol
ncftpbatch (1) - Batch FTP job processor daemon
ncftpget (1) - Internet file transfer program for scripts
ncftpls (1) - Internet file transfer program for scripts
ncftpput (1) - Internet file transfer program for scripts
xferlog2dlf (1) - convert FTP logs in xreflog format to DLF format
zshzftpsys (1) - zftp function front-end
The thing that I really like about unix-like OSs is that pretty much
everything I can think of wanting to do, someone else has wanted and
probably written something to do it.
--
75. I will instruct my Legions of Terror to attack the hero en masse, instead
of standing around waiting while members break off and attack one or two
at a time.
--Peter Anspach's list of things to do as an Evil Overlord
--
This is the NewtonTalk list - http://www.newtontalk.net/ for all inquiries
List FAQ/Etiquette/Terms: http://www.newtontalk.net/faq.html
Official Newton FAQ: http://www.chuma.org/newton/faq/
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Thu Jan 30 2003 - 11:00:02 PST