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'info bash' is much better than 'man bash', give it a try.
by slug 15y ago
'info bash' is much better than 'man bash', give it a try.
- p9idf 15y agoOn my system, the info documentation for bash 3.1, not including indices, is 53610 words, or 105 pages. The content is identical to that in the manpage. In addition, you have to read it in a clunky, unintuitive, and un-Unixy browser. Far from short and to-the-point, I nearly lost interest just trying to figure out how to coax info to send its output to stdout so I could pipe the 105 page book to wc. The info documentation is not in any way I can measure better than the manpage. Both the info documentation (and I use that term loosely) and the manpage are more noise than signal.
- dredmorbius 15y agoInfo pages are written as a single document, but displayed by the 'info' or 'pinfo' readers in multiple pages. You can simply view the original file (it has minimal markup) in a pager for a single-file view. I generally write an "info" script or function to replace the info viewer with something more useful. I share your dislike of the info format.
- 1337p337 15y agoOr, for another alternative, w3mman, which is bundled with the w3m browser. Tabbed manpage browsing in the terminal with URLs converted into links and "foo(1)" converted into a link to the man page for "foo". Don't leave home without it.