this post was submitted on 20 Jan 2024
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this image comes to mind every time i use man pages

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[–] [email protected] 40 points 7 months ago (2 children)
[–] [email protected] 9 points 7 months ago (5 children)

Is it just me or is man and --help kind of confusing to understand? Idk, I just have difficulty learning the commands that way.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago)

Ha ha ha, no you are most certainly not alone, that's gotta be one of the most common gripes with new users. Those things were written in the 70s and have remained unchanged since. It's a standardization thing. :)

[–] [email protected] 4 points 7 months ago

I find --help to be often useful, but man is hard to sell. As a tool to know more details of an option or to know everything that's available, it's great. As a first contact with the CLI tool or a quick lookup, man past the first paragraph is often a waste of time. For most lookups cheat.sh is much quicker.

Though I've recently been using clipea with GPT-4, and it's by far the best experience. Fastest way to have straightforward one-liners that do pretty much what you asked for.

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[–] [email protected] 33 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (3 children)

And then the manpage goes:

ThE fUlL dOcUmEnTaTiOn CaN bE vIeWeD wItH "info blah invocation"

Stop trying to make info a thing. It's not going to be a thing.

[–] [email protected] 17 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (1 children)

I used a tool yesterday whose manpage told me to look into --help for full list of commands. The audacity!

[–] [email protected] 9 points 7 months ago (1 children)

They could've just copy-pasted it! And --help should be a brief, easy-to-understand list of commands and explanations, not an extension

[–] [email protected] 2 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Some examples and common uses would be nice...

[–] [email protected] 2 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (1 children)

Yeah. I recommend the TLDR terminal tool. You can contribute command TLDRs. If there is a one for said command, you can type tldr comad and it will give you some valid uses and example commands.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 7 months ago

I knew about tldr, I'm old Linuxoid now, but didn't know you could contribute. I'll give it another go. By this point though... I've already been through the hellfire.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Especially when you don't have a US keyboard. How the fuck am I supposed to navigate through the info document when the key combination to follow links is Ctrl+] and ] itself is hidden behind some modifier combo?

[–] [email protected] 3 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Sounds like it needs better localization

[–] [email protected] 5 points 7 months ago

It needs to die in a fire. All hail man pages!

[–] [email protected] 4 points 7 months ago

That's basically just GNU programs

[–] [email protected] 21 points 7 months ago
[–] [email protected] 14 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Man is too much for me. I can't handle that many words at once, which is why I like using tldr

[–] [email protected] 2 points 7 months ago

Using u and d instead of page up and down made it much more readable for me, then you don't have a whole page with every button press

[–] [email protected] 14 points 7 months ago

man date always makes me chuckle

[–] [email protected] 9 points 7 months ago (2 children)

I first read this like "look, here is a image of a man" (-:

[–] [email protected] 5 points 7 months ago (1 children)

A miserable pile of secrets

[–] [email protected] 4 points 7 months ago

Enough talk… Have at you!

[–] [email protected] 2 points 7 months ago
[–] [email protected] 8 points 7 months ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 3 points 7 months ago

this will be helpful, but looks like github repo is no longer being maintained

[–] [email protected] 6 points 7 months ago (4 children)

I've never used it. Just typing /h -h --help and if that doesn't work then I'm Googling it.

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[–] [email protected] 6 points 7 months ago

Does this horse have a dog's tail?

[–] [email protected] 6 points 7 months ago

Yes babe I am real man, do you want to go skateboardz?

[–] [email protected] 5 points 7 months ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 8 points 7 months ago

I was in a very famous TV show...

[–] [email protected] 5 points 7 months ago

spaceballs? oh shit there goes the planet

[–] [email protected] 5 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago)

Guts' theme plays

[–] [email protected] 4 points 7 months ago (4 children)

Man horse beach? Man steed sea? Man pony sand? What?

[–] [email protected] 7 points 7 months ago (1 children)

You didn't see the battery staple?

[–] [email protected] 3 points 7 months ago

That's correct

[–] [email protected] 3 points 7 months ago (1 children)

You can lead a horse to water...

[–] [email protected] 6 points 7 months ago (1 children)

But you can't make it RTFM?

[–] [email protected] 4 points 7 months ago
[–] [email protected] 2 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (3 children)

man is a command in linux to bring up the manuals/docs

https://www.geeksforgeeks.org/man-command-in-linux-with-examples/

If you're on a linux distro, you could type:

man ls which would fetch you the manual for ls, which lists files and dirs for you. However, I think it's more common for users to use ls --help instead, which would show the same manual information.

(sorry if you already knew this, but it looked almost like you were asking what this means and then a bunch of linux users just joked around without explaining anything XD)

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[–] [email protected] 4 points 7 months ago (2 children)

You mean "history" right? Right?!

[–] [email protected] 6 points 7 months ago (1 children)

So many times I have looked up a command, used it and then forgotten the syntax. History is a life saver.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 7 months ago (2 children)
[–] [email protected] 2 points 7 months ago

Just installed it! Love it, and I just learned that ctrl+r is a thing.

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[–] [email protected] 2 points 7 months ago

Ctrl + R, what a wonderful phrase.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Just don't use ChatGPT or Bing AI

[–] [email protected] 4 points 7 months ago

I will use Google Bard then

[–] [email protected] 3 points 7 months ago

IT WAS EARTH ALL ALONG!!

[–] [email protected] 3 points 7 months ago

Why doesn't he call the avangers is he stupid?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 7 months ago

This made me laugh out loud for real.

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