when do you usually use the man page for a complex command line tool to answer a question you have?
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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 (/)(-(-))help kinda goes first...
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@b0rk if --help doesn't give enough info, man page is my second step
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@b0rk I'm a decades-long OpenBSD user and have been trained that way. Their man pages are well-wriiten & edited
@karabaic I've never used openbsd but I'm so curious about the openbsd man page culture because of how people talk about it
do you know if there's anywhere that I can read about the documentation philosophy or about how people relate to it?
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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 tealdeer is my first option, then `--help`, then the 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 I tend to use `curl cheat.sh/<command>` first, and then read the man page if the question is more complex…
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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 First 'usage' (aka --help), then, if not successful, the man pages.
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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 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.
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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")
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") -
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 --help first. man page second
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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 typically use -h or --help first, then the man page if necessary.
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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 same here. I find man pages quite overwhelming, especially for complex tools. Tldr has also become a go to source for me
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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 voted for man pages first;but I implicitly assumed it was a tool with which I was already familiar; if it were a completely new tool, there's a good chance I'd go web-search-first
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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 Like Kal said. I try -h --help if I am currently in the terminal. If I am in Emacs I first look for an info page and then for a man page.
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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
-First man
-Second no more google or any others similar, but https://lumo.proton.me or https://chat.mistral.ai/, more information, easier to use -
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 the most memorable drawback I've run into with online man pages is version differences between what I have installed and what the online man page is.
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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 that's basically what I do. program builtin help then as it's no help Google/other search engine then if i still need to know something hit the 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 Ah, thanks for the edit.
️ -
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
