RE: documentation for windows

RE: documentation for windows

[Steve Jorgensen]

The apropos command may be even more useful to a newby.  I don't remember 
how long I struggled the first time I wanted to rename a file.  The apropos 
command searches the man and info pages for a key word, and reports the 
relevant entries.

-----Original Message-----
From:	Joshua Franklin [SMTP:joshuadfranklin@yahoo.com]
Sent:	Monday, July 02, 2001 6:22 AM
To:	will@siteaboutnothing.com; cygwin@cygwin.com
Subject:	re: documentation for windows

If you're really that new to *NIX, you might not
know about the dominant form of documentation--
man pages. Just type 'man [name of command]' for
basic usage info. And, IARC, the BASH manual is
in /usr/doc or somewhere. Try 'find /usr -name "bash*.html"'

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RE: documentation for windows

[Michael Erdely]

It may also be worth noting, since you are recommending this for
newbies, that you have to type "/usr/sbin/makewhatis" to create the
whatis database for apropos to be useful. ;-)

-ME

-----Original Message-----
From: cygwin-owner@sources.redhat.com
[ mailto:cygwin-owner@sources.redhat.com ] On Behalf Of Steve Jorgensen
Sent: Monday, July 02, 2001 2:37 PM
To: cygwin@cygwin. Com (E-mail); cygwin@cygwin. Com (E-mail)
Subject: RE: documentation for windows


The apropos command may be even more useful to a newby.  I don't
remember 
how long I struggled the first time I wanted to rename a file.  The
apropos 
command searches the man and info pages for a key word, and reports the 
relevant entries.

-----Original Message-----
From:	Joshua Franklin [SMTP:joshuadfranklin@yahoo.com]
Sent:	Monday, July 02, 2001 6:22 AM
To:	will@siteaboutnothing.com; cygwin@cygwin.com
Subject:	re: documentation for windows

If you're really that new to *NIX, you might not
know about the dominant form of documentation--
man pages. Just type 'man [name of command]' for
basic usage info. And, IARC, the BASH manual is
in /usr/doc or somewhere. Try 'find /usr -name "bash*.html"'

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RE: documentation for windows

[Randall R Schulz]

Steve,

I love "apropos." If typing that gives you trouble, go with "man -k".

However, the important thing to note is that it's only searching the 
synopsis text at the top of the man page, not the full text of the page. 
Lastly, it searches for a character string, not a full word.

Randall Schulz


At 11:36 2001-07-02, Steve Jorgensen wrote:
>The apropos command may be even more useful to a newby.  I don't remember
>how long I struggled the first time I wanted to rename a file.  The apropos
>command searches the man and info pages for a key word, and reports the
>relevant entries.
>
>-----Original Message-----
>From:   Joshua Franklin [SMTP:joshuadfranklin@yahoo.com]
>Sent:   Monday, July 02, 2001 6:22 AM
>To:     will@siteaboutnothing.com; cygwin@cygwin.com
>Subject:        re: documentation for windows
>
>If you're really that new to *NIX, you might not
>know about the dominant form of documentation--
>man pages. Just type 'man [name of command]' for
>basic usage info. And, IARC, the BASH manual is
>in /usr/doc or somewhere. Try 'find /usr -name "bash*.html"'


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RE: documentation for windows

[Jonadab the Unsightly One]

# It may also be worth noting, since you are recommending this for
# newbies, that you have to type "/usr/sbin/makewhatis" to create the
# whatis database for apropos to be useful. ;-)

Wouldn't it be just as easy to grep /usr/man/man1/*
for your key word?  Or would that take longer?  

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RE: documentation for windows

[Randall R Schulz]

Jonadab,

Well, there's more to the manual than section 1, but that would be 
accommodated with this variation:

grep /usr/man/man*/*

Then there's the fact that you'd get all the lines from all the man page 
files, when what you want is to know the names of the commands on which to 
run "man." So:

grep -l /usr/man/man*/*

But the real problem is that you'll probably get too many false hits this 
way, since any old mention of the search pattern, regardless of whether the 
man page author considered it a "key word" in the synoptic description of 
the command.

You should be aware, too, that these files are man page _sources_ written 
in nroff for the man macros (plus, possibly, tbl, eqn or others). This 
could cause further false hits. In some cases, it might even cause a miss.

The pre-formatted pages for things that have already been "manned" are in 
/usr/man/cat*, but the formatting, including lots of embedded grunk (like 
backspace-encoded overtyping to get bold) and hyphenation, make grepping 
problematic.

If you have no luck with apropos / man -k, then the grep technique might 
work. Once up a time on a non-Unix system (MPW), I created an "apropos" 
command that had options to control how much of a help file entry (the MPW 
equivalent to man pages) would be searched. The default was still just the 
synopsis.

By the way, I don't think speed would be a problem with your suggestion for 
me, but I have two fast CPUs and pretty much the fastest disks and I/O 
adaptor available today. From this standpoint, I'd suggest egrep, which I 
use for all my "grepping" needs.

Randall Schulz


At 15:26 2001-07-03, Jonadab the Unsightly One wrote:

># It may also be worth noting, since you are recommending this for
># newbies, that you have to type "/usr/sbin/makewhatis" to create the
># whatis database for apropos to be useful. ;-)
>
>Wouldn't it be just as easy to grep /usr/man/man1/*
>for your key word?  Or would that take longer?


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RE: documentation for windows

[David Starks-Browning]

On Monday 2 Jul 01, Michael Erdely writes:
> It may also be worth noting, since you are recommending this for
> newbies, that you have to type "/usr/sbin/makewhatis" to create the
> whatis database for apropos to be useful. ;-)

It makes sense (at least to me) to do this as part of setup, at the
end.

Meanwhile, I'll add this to the FAQ.

Cheers,
David


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re: documentation for windows

[Joshua Franklin]

If you're really that new to *NIX, you might not
know about the dominant form of documentation--
man pages. Just type 'man [name of command]' for
basic usage info. And, IARC, the BASH manual is 
in /usr/doc or somewhere. Try 'find /usr -name "bash*.html"'

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