How do you read manpages? I recently installed openbsd on my second laptop and when I’m looking up the manpage of a program all I see is a short introduction and then a long list of flags each with its own explanation. Is it expected to read these from top down or is there a more efficient way?
>inb4 just search
I’m trying to get a general idea, not learn every single option I can pass to a program.
How do you read manpages...
Daniel Roberts
Jacob Cruz
With that out of the way, a lot of the time at the bottom you can get some examples.
Press G (capital g) to go to the bottom quickly then just go up until you see some things that look like
program --flag opt -f n whatever
or a header that says something along the lines of "examples"
Josiah Carter
>anime
hello newfag how do you do
Joshua Cox
>when the people I don't like do it they should go back
>when I do it, it's how it's meant to be
Egomania is a common symptom of underdeveloped social skills and an exceedingly low IQ.
Kayden Wood
anime website
Jonathan Wilson
You are a newfag that doesnt know who the character posted is and it shows you dont belong here faggot.
Easton Lopez
For shorter man pages, yes, indeed, you can read them top to bottom.
If you want to read a longer man page, you can read top to bottom and skip the entire list of flags. There's usually useful information both before the flag list and after the flag list.
If you want to figure out which flags are most important, read only about the flags that are both in the OpenBSD man page AND in POSIX. That intersection is most important.
You can read standards pages for utilities here:
pubs.opengroup.org
If you want tutorials, and are alright with outdated documents, check out the 2nd volume of the Unix manual:
s3.amazonaws.com
docs.freebsd.org
netbsd.org
Sadly when AT&T was being angry at Berkeley, many of these documents stopped being updated. However, these are the documents actually written to teach newbs Unix, unlike the first volume of the manual.
Jackson Perry
Why did my thread turn into a shitflinging contest about anime? Thanks btw
Charles Bennett
NP.
Joseph Wright
raymoo
Josiah Butler
You're not supposed to read them from top to bottom like it's a story.
You're supposed to read them when you want to learn what the command can do, which is either when it's the first time you see it or when you know the command can do what you want but you don't know on top of your head how.
Say I throw at you this Any Forums thread downloader.
wget -UMozilla -erobots=off -nd -rHD4cdn.org -Ajpg,png,gif,webm -Rs.jpg
With manpages, you should be able to figure out what wget does and what -U, -e, -nd, -r, -H, -D, -A and -R options do.
Dominic Thompson
it depends on why you want to read them for, if you want to find a single thing for example you can search keywords, otherwise i think it s the same thing
Brandon Cox
If you're new to OpenBSD then this FAQ could be helpful to get you started
openbsd.org
Robert Ward
If you have time, read the whole list of options. Not to learn them all by heart, but just to get an idea of what the program can do. Then if you need to do something like that later, you remeber that you can use program X for it and just search the manpage for the specifics of that option.
Another useful section is the examples. Not all man pages have them, but if they do they can help a lot, especially with complicated programs like find.
Liam Adams
OP saved a picture I posted a couple of days ago. Imagine shitting on him for anime when the Apple file hash ID was right there all along.
bunkerchan D&C out in full force today I see.
>mfw
Anthony Wright
depends on what manpage im reading. for userland stuff i just search the thing i need. for functions and syscalls i tend to read things more thoroughly to make sure i avoid any pitfalls.
David Brooks
>anime
Also I didnt make fun of OP I just asked the newfag how he was doing, and you are one too clearly.
Gavin Ramirez
In addition to this. Make aliases to the most common things you use. That way stuff like this:
can become something simple like
autism -av getautism.org
I have a bunch of these aliases for different things. I haven't interacted directly with emerge for years. I have a bunch of one-line commands like
moeupdate
moesync
moeget
etc etc. "moe" being the hostname.
Jacob Murphy
>How do you read manpages?
line by line how the fuck else you stupind animenigger
Austin White
>frogposting autist comes by kills the thread
sasuga baka desu senpai
Anthony Roberts
frog website