Searching manpages for option codes, e.g. "--all"

Searching manpages for option codes, e.g. "--all"

[carolus]

After opening "man ls", trying to search for "--all" leads to
"Pattern not found (press RETURN)".

Inquiring on comp.unix.shell, I was told that for this kind of search to 
work properly in linux , one must set PAGER=less. However, that does not 
seem to work in Cygwin, at least using the old default terminal. Is 
there a workaround?


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Re: Searching manpages for option codes, e.g. "--all"

[Tim McDaniel]

On Tue, 29 Nov 2011, carolus wrote:
> After opening "man ls", trying to search for "--all" leads to
> "Pattern not found (press RETURN)".

My experiment agrees with that.  Do you know why that happens -- what
is it doing so "/--all" doesn't work?

> Inquiring on comp.unix.shell, I was told that for this kind of
> search to work properly in linux , one must set PAGER=less. However,
> that does not seem to work in Cygwin, at least using the old default
> terminal. Is there a workaround?

Whether in an older default terminal or the new one, I've never had a
problem with
     PAGER=/usr/bin/less
     export PAGER
I do them as separate statements because older Bourne shells do not
allow the combined form
     export PAGER=/usr/bin/less
But bash does.

Further, on my system with little customization, the default man pager
is less anyway, so (for example)
     man ls
invokes less anyway.

-- 
Tim McDaniel, tmcd@panix.com

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Re: Searching manpages for option codes, e.g. "--all"

[carolus]

On 11/29/2011 3:56 PM, Tim McDaniel wrote:
> On Tue, 29 Nov 2011, carolus wrote:
>> After opening "man ls", trying to search for "--all" leads to
>> "Pattern not found (press RETURN)".
>
> My experiment agrees with that. Do you know why that happens -- what
> is it doing so "/--all" doesn't work?
>

No idea.  Apparently "man" invokes $PAGER, and in linux, "less" works as 
desired and "more" does not.  If you look at the .1 file, the option 
codes are scrambled with a lot of formatting codes that must be stripped 
out or ignored for search to work.


> Whether in an older default terminal or the new one, I've never had a
> problem with
> PAGER=/usr/bin/less
> export PAGER

You can set it, but that doesn't help.

> Further, on my system with little customization, the default man pager
> is less anyway, so (for example)
> man ls
> invokes less anyway.
>
Which explains why setting PAGER doesn't help in Cygwin.



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Re: Searching manpages for option codes, e.g. "--all"

[Gary Johnson]

On 2011-11-29, carolus wrote:
> After opening "man ls", trying to search for "--all" leads to
> "Pattern not found (press RETURN)".
> 
> Inquiring on comp.unix.shell, I was told that for this kind of
> search to work properly in linux , one must set PAGER=less. However,
> that does not seem to work in Cygwin, at least using the old default
> terminal. Is there a workaround?

As I recall, that was a problem shortly after Cygwin 1.7 was
released.  Man pages were being formatted with some sort of Unicode
hyphen or dash character in place of the ASCII hyphen.  It hasn't
been a problem recently, though, and it works fine for me, in both
the old Cygwin console and in mintty.

    cygwin 1.7.9-1
    less     444-1
    man     1.6g-1

    Windows XP Professional 2002 SP3

Regards,
Gary


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Re: Searching manpages for option codes, e.g. "--all"

[carolus]

On 11/29/2011 5:13 PM, Gary Johnson wrote:
  Man pages were being formatted with some sort of Unicode
> hyphen or dash character in place of the ASCII hyphen.

Not sure that is the same problem.  What happens if you search for --all 
in man ls? For me, the display looks OK, but the search doesn't work.



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Re: Searching manpages for option codes, e.g. "--all"

[Gary Johnson]

On 2011-11-29, carolus wrote:
> On 11/29/2011 5:13 PM, Gary Johnson wrote:
>  Man pages were being formatted with some sort of Unicode
> >hyphen or dash character in place of the ASCII hyphen.
> 
> Not sure that is the same problem.  What happens if you search for
> --all in man ls? For me, the display looks OK, but the search
> doesn't work.

The display scrolls so that the line

    -a, --all

is at the top of the screen and the string "--a" is highlighted in
reverse video in that line and in the lines

    -A, --almost-all

and

    --author

Typing 'n' scrolls the display so that the "-A, --almost-all" line
is at the top.

Does searching for a string that doesn't include hyphens work?
E.g.,

    /all

Regards,
Gary


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Re: Searching manpages for option codes, e.g. "--all"

[carolus]

On 11/29/2011 5:49 PM, Gary Johnson wrote:

>
> The display scrolls so that the line
>
>      -a, --all
>
> is at the top of the screen and the string "--a" is highlighted in
> reverse video in that line

Then maybe I just need to update my Cygwin installation, which is about 
a year old.  Are you using the old default windows terminal like me, or 
rxvt, mintty, xterm, or maybe something else?


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Re: Searching manpages for option codes, e.g. "--all"

[Larry Hall (Cygwin)]

On 11/29/2011 9:29 PM, carolus wrote:
> Then maybe I just need to update my Cygwin installation, which is about a
> year old. Are you using the old default windows terminal like me, or rxvt,
> mintty, xterm, or maybe something else?

Works for me in both.

-- 
Larry

_____________________________________________________________________

A: Yes.
 > Q: Are you sure?
 >> A: Because it reverses the logical flow of conversation.
 >>> Q: Why is top posting annoying in email?

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Re: Searching manpages for option codes, e.g. "--all"

[Larry Hall (Cygwin)]

On 11/29/2011 9:29 PM, carolus wrote:
> Then maybe I just need to update my Cygwin installation, which is about a
> year old. Are you using the old default windows terminal like me, or rxvt,
> mintty, xterm, or maybe something else?

Works for me in mintty and the console window.

-- 
Larry

_____________________________________________________________________

A: Yes.
 > Q: Are you sure?
 >> A: Because it reverses the logical flow of conversation.
 >>> Q: Why is top posting annoying in email?

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Re: Searching manpages for option codes, e.g. "--all"

[Gary Johnson]

On 2011-11-29, Larry Hall (Cygwin) wrote:
> On 11/29/2011 9:29 PM, carolus wrote:
> >Then maybe I just need to update my Cygwin installation, which is about a
> >year old. Are you using the old default windows terminal like me, or rxvt,
> >mintty, xterm, or maybe something else?
> 
> Works for me in mintty and the console window.

Ditto.

Gary


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Re: Searching manpages for option codes, e.g. "--all"

[carolus]

On 11/29/2011 8:29 PM, carolus wrote:

> Then maybe I just need to update my Cygwin installation, which is about
> a year old.

Yes, that fixes the problem.  Thanks, everyone.


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