UnixSupport.com

Ok, I feel stupid, however I never realized that I could search man pages!

For those that don’t know, unix offers a built in “manual” command called “man”… sometimes it’s helpful, sometimes it’s there just for reference. It’s easy

$ man command

in this case man ls

LS(1) FreeBSD General Commands Manual LS(1)

NAME
ls - list directory contents

SYNOPSIS
ls [-ABCFGHLPRTWabcdfghiklmnopqrstuwx1] [file …]

DESCRIPTION
For each operand that names a file of a type other than directory, ls
displays its name as well as any requested, associated information. For
each operand that names a file of type directory, ls displays the names
of files contained within that directory, as well as any requested, asso-
ciated information.[and on and on]

man is a great thing, however sometimes you end up forgetting the command your using, and thats when my new little friend helps out…

$ man -k search-scring[ENTER]

This is awsome, now I can find all the insane instances of locate man -k locate

cfree(3) - free up allocated memory
index(3) - locate character in string
locate(1) - find filenames quickly
locate.updatedb(8) - update locate database
memchr(3) - locate byte in byte string
mmap(2) - allocate memory, or map files or devices into memory
pthread_mutex_destroy(3) - free resources allocated for a mutex
rindex(3) - locate character in string
strchr(3) - locate character in string
strpbrk(3) - locate multiple characters in string
strrchr(3) - locate character in string
strstr(3), strcasestr(3), strnstr(3) - locate a substring in a string
usbhid(3), hid_get_report_desc(3), hid_use_report_desc(3), hid_dispose_report_desc(3), hid_start_par
se(3), hid_end_parse(3), hid_get_item(3), hid_report_size(3), hid_locate(3), hid_usage_page(3), hid_
usage_in_page(3), hid_init(3), hid_get_data(3), hid_set_data(3) - USB HID access routines
whereis(1) - locate programs
which(1) - locate a program file in the user’s path

Give it a whirl!