when do you usually use the man page for a complex command line tool to answer a question you have?
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i'm very curious about everyone who says "I'd look there first", if I want to figure out how to do something new I think I'll usually google how to do it rather than look at the man page, and then maybe later look at the man page to look up the details
(I've gotten enough of these answers:
- "I like that man pages don't require changing context"
- "with the man page I know I have the right version of the docs")@b0rk I used to do a web search first but with the advent of LLMs I started questioning the authority of some randos on the Internet. So I'll always try official docs first now, then books about the topics and only if it gets desperate I try the source code or everything else.
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i'm very curious about everyone who says "I'd look there first", if I want to figure out how to do something new I think I'll usually google how to do it rather than look at the man page, and then maybe later look at the man page to look up the details
(I've gotten enough of these answers:
- "I like that man pages don't require changing context"
- "with the man page I know I have the right version of the docs")@b0rk For me, it is avery very old habit. When I started out poking at Unix systems, if I wanted to "get information from outside the computer I was on", I could, if I was lucky, turn my head and ask someone else in the same room.
Otherwise, I would have to fire up a newsreader, post to UseNet, wait for the UUCP spool to empty (over a modem), wait for the reply to be written, then wait for the relevant article to trickle back in a later UUCP update batch.
I will, frequently, after having opened the man page, start a web search pretty soon after, because many man pages are badly written (and I must say that good technical writing is a skill that doesn't necessarily correlate with "ability to write code").
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i'm very curious about everyone who says "I'd look there first", if I want to figure out how to do something new I think I'll usually google how to do it rather than look at the man page, and then maybe later look at the man page to look up the details
(I've gotten enough of these answers:
- "I like that man pages don't require changing context"
- "with the man page I know I have the right version of the docs")@b0rk
Two things, for me:
* If I'm already using $tool, then "man $tool" seems the most direct way to find what I need to know to use it
* web search sucks and has for a long time now. Google or DDG is just as likely to direct me to slop, or previously to an undated HOWTO that might be 3 versions out of date and from before the tool was rewritten in rust or some other reason to fully change its UX -
when do you usually use the man page for a complex command line tool to answer a question you have? (like git, openssl, rsync, curl, etc)
(edit: no need to say "i use --help then man")
@b0rk for some commands I know the manpage is decent and I'll look there. for others I know it doesn't exist or is crap, so I'll check -h or just search online. I sometimes reach for it first on new commands, sometimes not. no real rhyme or reason, mostly just whatever direction my brain goes in the moment.
I do, however, hate certain manpages with a fiery passion. like builtins being one giant manpage that you can't search because it looks for results in all builtin commands. hateful design.
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i'm very curious about everyone who says "I'd look there first", if I want to figure out how to do something new I think I'll usually google how to do it rather than look at the man page, and then maybe later look at the man page to look up the details
(I've gotten enough of these answers:
- "I like that man pages don't require changing context"
- "with the man page I know I have the right version of the docs")@b0rk As others have mentioned, -h first, then man pages.
Some programs are very well documented, so I'd rather check what's immediately available first (and trust the developer), and then only confront the possibly overwhelming, outdated or confusing search engine replies which often take more time and caution to handle -
when do you usually use the man page for a complex command line tool to answer a question you have? (like git, openssl, rsync, curl, etc)
(edit: no need to say "i use --help then man")
@b0rk@social.jvns.ca For most tools, it's the first thing I check, but with git, I prefer looking up the online documentation.
Man pages are generally more easily accessed than, say, google, as you can open them directly in the terminal you're already typing in. However, good web pages are much easier for a modern user to navigate than a terminal man page. So it's about how much effort you'd have to spend trying to find the answer on a man page versus how much effort it would take to get to a webpage that answers it. -
i'm very curious about everyone who says "I'd look there first", if I want to figure out how to do something new I think I'll usually google how to do it rather than look at the man page, and then maybe later look at the man page to look up the details
(I've gotten enough of these answers:
- "I like that man pages don't require changing context"
- "with the man page I know I have the right version of the docs")@b0rk It depends. I use Google first when I try to find the right tool for the job, and those searches usually yield full commands that I can just copy-paste. But a manpage in this case won't help as I don't know what to man.
When I know the right tool, and it's not ffmpeg, I try to craft the correct command myself. That helps me remember it better.
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when do you usually use the man page for a complex command line tool to answer a question you have? (like git, openssl, rsync, curl, etc)
(edit: no need to say "i use --help then man")
@b0rk Example: ImageMagick's documentation doesn't contain the keyword "dpi" so you'd spend some time trying to find the right option name.
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i'm very curious about everyone who says "I'd look there first", if I want to figure out how to do something new I think I'll usually google how to do it rather than look at the man page, and then maybe later look at the man page to look up the details
(I've gotten enough of these answers:
- "I like that man pages don't require changing context"
- "with the man page I know I have the right version of the docs")@b0rk for me, I think it's a combination of an 'old people' thing and a 'highly suspicious of a lot of the modern Internet' thing.
When I learned to use computers, competent search engines and rich online resources like Stack Exchange were a long way off – even having the Internet in your home without paying per minute wasn't around yet. So you had to develop the skills of finding stuff out from the available local resources like manuals, because that was all you had.
Then good search engines came along, but I was always aware that there's a risk of depending too much on them and losing the ability to figure stuff out yourself. Even now, I sometimes find myself coding without the Internet (or effectively so – laptop on train with terrible connectivity) and it's useful that I can still get things done.
And now search engines are all getting enshittified, and/or monetised, and/or straight-up _worse_ (Google doesn't return the results I actually wanted nearly as often as it used to). And the less said about 2020s answers to this kind of question, the better. So I'm doubly glad I haven't abandoned my old approaches to things. More and more I feel it's important to keep external corporately-provided "do it for you" services at arm's length, and not base your whole workflow on them to the extent that you're a captive market or dependent on them not going down.
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@b0rk it depends somewhat on the program, and somewhat on what I'm trying to find out.
Man pages are usually good for finding out what an option does, if you already know the name of the option. Not all of them are so good for going in the other direction – if you know _what_ you want to do, and are trying to find out if there's an option that does it, and what it's called. Understandable, because the former is easier to write. But the latter is surely _more_ often what people want!
(Although not 100%. Reading other people's scripts is a common way to find out the name of an option you didn't know and now have to look up what it does.)
Usually I'll try --help before the manual, simply because it's likely to be shorter, so it's quicker to look through all the options and pick out the one I'm likely to want. Maybe if anything's still unclear I'll try the man page and hope it goes into more detail. But of course in some cases they do the same thing anyway: 'git foo --help' is no different from 'man git-foo'.
Of course, if you're starting from some task you want to perform another possibility is that you don't even yet know which _program_ you want to use, in which case a straight-up search engine might be the place to look first, looking for something like a Stack Exchange post that suggests a combination of program and options.
@simontatham @b0rk I agree with this answer. I selected, "I'd look at man first", but I actually check "--help" first, and I only really use these options if I think I know which command-ish or API I want to use.
This is my most frequent use case because I usually remember the shape of what I want but not the details.
If I don't have any clue - search engine.
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@b0rk I use man pages a lot but I typically find them on the web, as I find the CLI a pain to browse or search them.
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@b0rk For me, it is avery very old habit. When I started out poking at Unix systems, if I wanted to "get information from outside the computer I was on", I could, if I was lucky, turn my head and ask someone else in the same room.
Otherwise, I would have to fire up a newsreader, post to UseNet, wait for the UUCP spool to empty (over a modem), wait for the reply to be written, then wait for the relevant article to trickle back in a later UUCP update batch.
I will, frequently, after having opened the man page, start a web search pretty soon after, because many man pages are badly written (and I must say that good technical writing is a skill that doesn't necessarily correlate with "ability to write code").
@vatine @b0rk
Yup, same. My first laptop ran qnx 4 and came with the man pages on paper (it was something like 1.5 shelf-metres of very nicely bound softcover books), and I was coming from MS-DOS and Win 3.1. I spent a lot of time poring over those manuals to learn even the most basic stuff like "how to 'dir'" and "how to quit elvis". -
when do you usually use the man page for a complex command line tool to answer a question you have? (like git, openssl, rsync, curl, etc)
(edit: no need to say "i use --help then man")
@b0rk I look for the info manual first, then if it doesn't exist go for manpages, if it is incomprehensible I reach for a search engine.
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when do you usually use the man page for a complex command line tool to answer a question you have? (like git, openssl, rsync, curl, etc)
(edit: no need to say "i use --help then man")
@b0rk My default is `--help` first, then the man page, then search the internet. I don't think I have ever tried an info doc, even though GNU tools tell me to do that. Maybe because I never got into emacs?
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i'm very curious about everyone who says "I'd look there first", if I want to figure out how to do something new I think I'll usually google how to do it rather than look at the man page, and then maybe later look at the man page to look up the details
(I've gotten enough of these answers:
- "I like that man pages don't require changing context"
- "with the man page I know I have the right version of the docs")@b0rk in general I'm in the terminal, I know the command should do the thing I want, and man is in the terminal so I don't have to switch app (and being distracted by the browser)
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@b0rk for me, I think it's a combination of an 'old people' thing and a 'highly suspicious of a lot of the modern Internet' thing.
When I learned to use computers, competent search engines and rich online resources like Stack Exchange were a long way off – even having the Internet in your home without paying per minute wasn't around yet. So you had to develop the skills of finding stuff out from the available local resources like manuals, because that was all you had.
Then good search engines came along, but I was always aware that there's a risk of depending too much on them and losing the ability to figure stuff out yourself. Even now, I sometimes find myself coding without the Internet (or effectively so – laptop on train with terrible connectivity) and it's useful that I can still get things done.
And now search engines are all getting enshittified, and/or monetised, and/or straight-up _worse_ (Google doesn't return the results I actually wanted nearly as often as it used to). And the less said about 2020s answers to this kind of question, the better. So I'm doubly glad I haven't abandoned my old approaches to things. More and more I feel it's important to keep external corporately-provided "do it for you" services at arm's length, and not base your whole workflow on them to the extent that you're a captive market or dependent on them not going down.
@simontatham yea i think part of the reason I'm newly interested in man pages right now is that search engines are so much worse than they used to be
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i'm very curious about everyone who says "I'd look there first", if I want to figure out how to do something new I think I'll usually google how to do it rather than look at the man page, and then maybe later look at the man page to look up the details
(I've gotten enough of these answers:
- "I like that man pages don't require changing context"
- "with the man page I know I have the right version of the docs")@b0rk answered with that option as well. with alt+h in fish, it just opens as some kind of overlay, allowing me to search the man page without removing what I've entered first.
If the man page doesn't work, the second approach is `cheat <command>` with cheat being a fish function which queries cheat.sh/<command> and pipes the output into bat.
And only after that, I'll search for information via the browser ^^
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when do you usually use the man page for a complex command line tool to answer a question you have? (like git, openssl, rsync, curl, etc)
(edit: no need to say "i use --help then man")
@b0rk I'm sure how to vote, but usually my order is:
- --help
- man page
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when do you usually use the man page for a complex command line tool to answer a question you have? (like git, openssl, rsync, curl, etc)
(edit: no need to say "i use --help then man")
@b0rk usually —help first, then google or an llm to find the flags i’m interested in, then a man page for the details
in the middle i’ll try things; if they work i’ll either stop there, or skip the intermediate steps and go straight to the man page to figure out what the general behavior is now that it’s working in this specific case
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when do you usually use the man page for a complex command line tool to answer a question you have? (like git, openssl, rsync, curl, etc)
(edit: no need to say "i use --help then man")
@b0rk I usually start with a help command (usually shorter, probably covers what I need). the man page is like a tier 3 option.
