The UNIX system provides on-line manuals for most commands, services,
system calls, and other useful material. Most of the time, these on-line
manual pages are exactly what you would get if you purchased a copy of
the printed manuals for the system, in fact, most UNIX vendors won't even
sell you hard-copy manuals anymore. To access the manual
pages enter:
man <subject>
This will display manual pages for subject, providing that it exists.
Keep in mind that searches done by man are case-sensitive (as are
all UNIX commands, filenames, etc. ); a search for ''GCC'' will yield a
''No manual entry'' message, while a search for the command ''gcc'' will
open the appropriate manual page.
To look for a command or manual page
when you don't know what the command is called, you can do a manual page
lookup by keywords found in the command or subject's description.
man -k <keyword>
An alternative way to do the keyword search is with the apropos
command, it is equivalent to man with the -k argument:
apropos <keyword>
For information on how to use the man command itself enter:
man man
Pressing <CR> causes the manual pages to scroll one line at a time.
while <spacebar> scrolls one page at a time. <ctrl-b> returns
to the previous page.
While reading a manual page, you can search for a specific word in the
manual by entering a backslash (/) followed by the word you wish
to locate.
Always consult the manual pages on a subject before
you go off and ask people questions. You will be wasting a consultant's time
if all he or she does is look up a subject in the man pages for you.
The first thing a consultant will say to you when you ask about a
command is ''Did you read the manual pages?'' They will not answer your
question if you answer no.
Under X windows you can use the xman menu item, or type xman to get
a windows based access to manual pages.