4 ms·

Many Linux man pages have the thoroughness of a fortune cookie, so I can understand the skepticism. Jackpot if they're just a pointer to an 'info' page.

darkwater 7mo ago
Do we still have those? I think it was common in late '90s, due to GNU trying to get `info` gain moment but nowadays?
- skywhopper 7mo ago
  Mostly just the bash builtins have (had) this problem.
aa-jv 7mo ago
But its also true that many, many man pages have extremely valuable information that no enterprising hacker should overlook, too ..
halapro 7mo ago
I was never able to properly parse large man pages, I'm so happy that llms can now prepare half a usable command without spending an hour reading a time without a single usage example.
- jeremyscanvic 7mo ago
  What I usually do when I have to read large man pages like bash(1) is I read them as PDFs: man -Tpdf bash | zathura - Replace zathura with any PDF viewer reading from stdin or just save the PDF. Hope that can be useful to someone!
  - sourcegrift 7mo ago
    my manpager is `vim -`, can't beat that
    - homebrewer 7mo ago
      You probably can — by using neovim: https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Neovim#Use_as_a_pager https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Neovim#Use_as_a_pager https://neovim.io/doc/user/filetype/#_man https://neovim.io/doc/user/filetype/#_man I've also been running (neo)vim as a manpager. You get the same features as with vim (like easily copying text or opening referenced files/other manpages without using the mouse), but neovim also parses the page and creates a table of contents, which can be used for navigation within the page. It doesn't always work perfectly, but is usually better than nothing.
- throw-the-towel 7mo ago
  `tldr` is also great. It's essentially a collection of example invocations of *nix commands.
  - pelotron 7mo ago
    TIL that what I have wanted in manpages for years exists. Thank you!
  - rebane2001 7mo ago
    tldr is so good, i wish it was a part of the os the same way manpages are just to help out newcomers
Almondsetat 7mo ago
The real jackpot is if they're the same as the --help command
- jbaber 7mo ago
  I used to think this and used things like `help2man`. I now disagree, but throwing it out there.
  - nticompass 7mo ago
    I could use some "help2man." I don't know how to "man" /s
gcr 7mo ago
Most people just discount man pages as unreadable and don’t even try to understand them. Case in point: the jq man page is incredible and everyone I know instead runs off to google or stackoverflow or Claude to answer simple questions

darkwater 7mo ago

Do we still have those? I think it was common in late '90s, due to GNU trying to get `info` gain moment but nowadays?

skywhopper 7mo ago
Mostly just the bash builtins have (had) this problem.

aa-jv 7mo ago

But its also true that many, many man pages have extremely valuable information that no enterprising hacker should overlook, too ..

halapro 7mo ago

I was never able to properly parse large man pages, I'm so happy that llms can now prepare half a usable command without spending an hour reading a time without a single usage example.

jeremyscanvic 7mo ago
What I usually do when I have to read large man pages like bash(1) is I read them as PDFs: man -Tpdf bash | zathura - Replace zathura with any PDF viewer reading from stdin or just save the PDF. Hope that can be useful to someone!
- sourcegrift 7mo ago
  my manpager is `vim -`, can't beat that
  - homebrewer 7mo ago
    You probably can — by using neovim: https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Neovim#Use_as_a_pager https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Neovim#Use_as_a_pager https://neovim.io/doc/user/filetype/#_man https://neovim.io/doc/user/filetype/#_man I've also been running (neo)vim as a manpager. You get the same features as with vim (like easily copying text or opening referenced files/other manpages without using the mouse), but neovim also parses the page and creates a table of contents, which can be used for navigation within the page. It doesn't always work perfectly, but is usually better than nothing.
throw-the-towel 7mo ago
`tldr` is also great. It's essentially a collection of example invocations of *nix commands.
- pelotron 7mo ago
  TIL that what I have wanted in manpages for years exists. Thank you!
- rebane2001 7mo ago
  tldr is so good, i wish it was a part of the os the same way manpages are just to help out newcomers

Almondsetat 7mo ago

The real jackpot is if they're the same as the --help command

jbaber 7mo ago
I used to think this and used things like `help2man`. I now disagree, but throwing it out there.
- nticompass 7mo ago
  I could use some "help2man." I don't know how to "man" /s

gcr 7mo ago

Most people just discount man pages as unreadable and don’t even try to understand them. Case in point: the jq man page is incredible and everyone I know instead runs off to google or stackoverflow or Claude to answer simple questions