Linux Command Line For Beginners: Finding Help Documents
Helping Yourself to Help
Juliet Kemp
Monday, January 5, 2009 12:56:01 PM
The Linux command-line can appear pretty complicated and occasionally even
a little alarming. But it also offers a whole stack of helpful documentation
which you can access directly from the command-line. Read on to learn how to
help yourself when – or even before – you get stuck.
apropos
A question you may have quite early on in your command-line exploration is:
is there a command that does the thing I want to do? apropos is here
to help. Manual pages (I'll discuss these in more detail below) are available
for almost all Linux commands, and include a short description of the command.
apropos searches this for the string you provide. So
apropos date
will output every command that has the word "date" in its name or its short
description, as in this Figure 1.
This is helpful if you know that there is a command a bit like [whatever] but
can't quite remember it; or if you're looking for a command to do a
particular task. If you find a command that might be what you're after, but
you're not sure, try checking its manual page (see next page).
--help
If you know what command you want to use, and you know roughly how it
works, but you've forgotten the details, then the option --help may
be useful. For example, try the command:
du --help
to get information on what options you can use with the du command
(this gives you information about disk usage). In some cases the help output
may be too long for the screen: in this case try:
du --help | more
and press the space key to scroll down through the information.
Next: Man (manual) Pages »
