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What's a handy terminal command you use often? (lemm.ee)

submitted 2 months ago by cybercitizen4@lemm.ee to c/asklemmy@lemmy.ml

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[–] vrighter@discuss.tchncs.de 2 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (2 children)

thanks for the advice. I knew about the search feature, but sometimes the stuff you need isn't even on the page. I have no idea how to find what I need when it's not in "man cmdname" how am I supposed to know that the feature i want has a dedicated page?

how could I find certain commands if i didn't already know it was a shell builtin and not a command? It's not like you get a manpage saying "this is not a command". And even if i did have the idea to open the bash page, it's still useless, because builtins are their own dedicated page. That sort of stuff. It rarely ever makes things easier for me.

edit, it is occasionally useful phen I have already found what I want on google and just want some more in depth details.

[–] wuphysics87@lemmy.ml 1 points 2 months ago

Unfortunately, sometimes (often) there is no man page for what you are looking for. So if you get a page not found, that's usually the case. You can usually find associated pages all the way at the bottom. That helps when what you are looking for isn't a command, but a reference. I don't remember exactly where it is, but man pages are stored in a directory. Probably /etc or /usr. You can always dump that list into fzf or use grep to search to see if there is a page for what you are looking for. It's not a perfect system by any means, but it's a good one to have in your toolbelt.

[–] JackbyDev@programming.dev 1 points 2 months ago (1 children)

If something is a bash built-in run help blah for it's "man page"

But yeah, man pages tick me off. Wait until you learn that there are sometimes more than one per command. I have to Google which page is which because they're all for specific things. man foo is the equivalent of man 1 foo. What's annoying is that the few times I've seen something referenced on another page the entry usually just says something like it's on "the relevant man page" rather than just telling you exactly which.

[–] vrighter@discuss.tchncs.de 1 points 2 months ago

ok but that still entails trying random things until i find it. If I didn't already know it was a builtin i wouldn't know to search there. The bash thing was just an example. I have learned this stuff since i encountered the problem. This is just me recollecting my experience of trying to use man