4 ms·

It's too bad most man pages don't include anything in the EXAMPLES section.

BossingAround 4y ago
My biggest pet peeve! I have a feeling that in the past, man pages used to be much more detailed when it comes to actual examples.
- JJMcJ 4y ago
  The feeling that a single actual example would make the whole thing a million times clearer. Sometimes there's also an `info` file with more detail. And one of my pet peeves. Do a search "How to briwyw the gomleqq" and the first one you look at has screen after screen of how to install Linux and everything and then finally at the very bottom it is finally revealed gomleqq --briwyw 40 --eiei-dddd 9 and that's the little bit of knowledge that I needed all along, along with that fact that 40 needs to be at least 4 times bigger than 9 or you'll get dropped packets.
  - 0des 4y ago
    going back and forth from a search tab, the results, and this comment, I'm over here trying to remember FAST in case Im having a stroke or what. Is this tool written in Klingon or something?
    - JJMcJ 4y ago
      No, it is Linear A. Remember the Klingon saying. > A programmer who releases open source lacking a man page and info file has no honor.
  - avgcorrection 4y ago
    Have you ever needed to briwyw the gomleqq on Linux? We at Digital Ocean sure have. But how do you do it? Read on to find out.
    - JJMcJ 4y ago
      I think you won the Internet for the day.
  - _carbyau_ 4y ago
    To paraphrase: Eh, you were lucky to have a page! We used to have to skip forwards and backwards through a video!
- marcosdumay 4y ago
  My impression is that people stopped filling their man pages because the information got into info pages when there was an ongoing campaign to create those (because the format was much more expressible). And then, the users simply didn't learn how to use info, so developers dropped those and kept only the very short man pages.
  - jandrese 4y ago
    The Info command kind of sucks to use though. It's way more complex than you would expect for a manual viewer. The help screen itself is 300 lines long and full of stuff like: LFD (select-reference-this-line) Select reference or menu item appearing on this line The help page talks a ton about xrefs and nodes and references and echo areas and tree searches without ever explaining what any of those things are. The h key as always does nothing.
    - bombcar 4y ago
      info was emacs trying to be a web-browser and it can go die in a fire. I hated the days of "the man page is blank, see the GNU info documentation" - almost drove me to BSD.
  - akira2501 4y ago
    They're both suited to their individual purposes. Info pages are like big old clunky manuals with diagrams and schematics and "theory of operation" chapters. Great when you're on the ground doing maintenance. Man pages are like quick reference handbooks. Great when you're already at 30,000' and just need to keep the plane flying.
- gumby 4y ago
  As a Unix user since around 1980 I can reassure you that man pages these days are far more extensive than they used to be.
  - bombcar 4y ago
    The extensivisity is part of the problem - you don't want paragraphs upon paragraphs, you often just want a short reminder as to which option is which. But so many programs have decent built in "help" now it's not as big a deal - I remember when ls --help would just return every possible valid option on one big line ... which now Google does for us: https://www.google.com/search?q=ls+options https://www.google.com/search?q=ls+options ls -1AacCdeFilnpLRrSsTtuvwxXhk FILE... indeed
chrisallenlane 4y ago
This was essentially my primary motivation for writing `cheat`. The `man` pages are thorough, but often lack examples demonstrating the common use-cases. I eventually tired of Googling "how to extract a tarball" (because I'm too lazy to read the lengthy manpage), and decided to create some supplemental tooling.
cptnapalm 4y ago
In a recent discussion of fzf, I looked through the man page and still didn't know what it was supposed to do. An example might have helped.
t0astbread 4y ago
That kinda makes me think if it would be possible to write a tool that patches these cheat sheets into man pages that don't yet have an EXAMPLES section.

My biggest pet peeve! I have a feeling that in the past, man pages used to be much more detailed when it comes to actual examples.

JJMcJ 4y ago
The feeling that a single actual example would make the whole thing a million times clearer. Sometimes there's also an `info` file with more detail. And one of my pet peeves. Do a search "How to briwyw the gomleqq" and the first one you look at has screen after screen of how to install Linux and everything and then finally at the very bottom it is finally revealed gomleqq --briwyw 40 --eiei-dddd 9 and that's the little bit of knowledge that I needed all along, along with that fact that 40 needs to be at least 4 times bigger than 9 or you'll get dropped packets.
- 0des 4y ago
  going back and forth from a search tab, the results, and this comment, I'm over here trying to remember FAST in case Im having a stroke or what. Is this tool written in Klingon or something?
  - JJMcJ 4y ago
    No, it is Linear A. Remember the Klingon saying. > A programmer who releases open source lacking a man page and info file has no honor.
- avgcorrection 4y ago
  Have you ever needed to briwyw the gomleqq on Linux? We at Digital Ocean sure have. But how do you do it? Read on to find out.
  - JJMcJ 4y ago
    I think you won the Internet for the day.
- _carbyau_ 4y ago
  To paraphrase: Eh, you were lucky to have a page! We used to have to skip forwards and backwards through a video!
marcosdumay 4y ago
My impression is that people stopped filling their man pages because the information got into info pages when there was an ongoing campaign to create those (because the format was much more expressible). And then, the users simply didn't learn how to use info, so developers dropped those and kept only the very short man pages.
- jandrese 4y ago
  The Info command kind of sucks to use though. It's way more complex than you would expect for a manual viewer. The help screen itself is 300 lines long and full of stuff like: LFD (select-reference-this-line) Select reference or menu item appearing on this line The help page talks a ton about xrefs and nodes and references and echo areas and tree searches without ever explaining what any of those things are. The h key as always does nothing.
  - bombcar 4y ago
    info was emacs trying to be a web-browser and it can go die in a fire. I hated the days of "the man page is blank, see the GNU info documentation" - almost drove me to BSD.
- akira2501 4y ago
  They're both suited to their individual purposes. Info pages are like big old clunky manuals with diagrams and schematics and "theory of operation" chapters. Great when you're on the ground doing maintenance. Man pages are like quick reference handbooks. Great when you're already at 30,000' and just need to keep the plane flying.
gumby 4y ago
As a Unix user since around 1980 I can reassure you that man pages these days are far more extensive than they used to be.
- bombcar 4y ago
  The extensivisity is part of the problem - you don't want paragraphs upon paragraphs, you often just want a short reminder as to which option is which. But so many programs have decent built in "help" now it's not as big a deal - I remember when ls --help would just return every possible valid option on one big line ... which now Google does for us: https://www.google.com/search?q=ls+options https://www.google.com/search?q=ls+options ls -1AacCdeFilnpLRrSsTtuvwxXhk FILE... indeed

chrisallenlane 4y ago

This was essentially my primary motivation for writing `cheat`. The `man` pages are thorough, but often lack examples demonstrating the common use-cases. I eventually tired of Googling "how to extract a tarball" (because I'm too lazy to read the lengthy manpage), and decided to create some supplemental tooling.

cptnapalm 4y ago

In a recent discussion of fzf, I looked through the man page and still didn't know what it was supposed to do. An example might have helped.

t0astbread 4y ago

That kinda makes me think if it would be possible to write a tool that patches these cheat sheets into man pages that don't yet have an EXAMPLES section.