Man

Resources

• How to Use Linux’s man Command: Hidden Secrets and Basics
• How to Easily Read a Linux Man Page
  • Underlined or Italicized Text: It means you need to replace it with an appropriate argument.
  • Ellipses: It means that argument or expression is repeatable.

Navigation

Gentoo and fossbytes

• Enter – Move down one line
• Space – Move down one page
• g – Move to the top of the page
• G – Move to the bottom of the page
• q – Quit

Search within a man page

Use / and type your search pattern.

Use 'n' for forward search and 'N' for reverse search.

The matched line will be moved to the top of the screen.

By default, the search is case insensitive or we can use man -i COMMAND.

Regular expression is supported. For example to find all of the long arguments with: /(--)[a-Z]

Colored man pages

This is a cool tip!

By default, the man program normally uses a terminal pager program such as less to format its output.

Add the following to "~/.bashrc" file. For example, LESS_TERMCAP_mb customizes the appearance of blink text in the less pager (or man command) and LESS_TERMCAP_us customizes the appearance of underlined text in the less pager.

# Customize less colors
export LESS_TERMCAP_mb=$'\e[1;32m'  # Blinking text: bold green
export LESS_TERMCAP_md=$'\e[1;34m'  # Bold text: bold blue
export LESS_TERMCAP_me=$'\e[0m'     # End mode
export LESS_TERMCAP_so=$'\e[01;47;34m'  # Standout: bold white on blue
export LESS_TERMCAP_se=$'\e[0m'     # End standout mode
export LESS_TERMCAP_us=$'\e[1;4;31m'  # Underlined text: bold underlined red
export LESS_TERMCAP_ue=$'\e[0m'     # End underline

The most Pager

• How To Display Color Man Pages in Linux and Unix
• How to Display man Pages in Color on Linux.
• Most: The Linux Pager You Never Knew You Needed

Navigate to another man page within a man page

See here.

When inside the man page, press ! followed by a valid shell command.

For example : !man cat

View a specific "Section"

• What do the numbers in a man page mean?
• How do you switch between Linux manual pages?

$ whatis printf
printf (1)           - format and print data
printf (3)           - formatted output conversion
Printf (3o)          - Formatted output functions.
$ man 3 printf

Read man pages in vi without using temporary files

What is a way to read man pages in vim without using temporary files

man find | vi -

Search man page referenced by

man -f KEYWORD

This command is equivalent to whatis -r KEYWORD

Search from all man pages

man -k KEYWORD will give you a list of all man pages which relate to 'KEYWORD'.

TLDR pages/cheat sheet: alternative to Man

• https://tldr.sh/
• TLDR pages: Simplified Alternative To Linux Man Pages. Be sure to install the latest versions of nodejs and npm. Tested on Ubuntu 16.04, 20.04. Example:

  # Downloads a setup script from NodeSource and adds the NodeSource GPG key.
  # Configures the NodeSource repository for Node.js 22.x in your APT sources.
  $ curl -fsSL https://deb.nodesource.com/setup_22.x | sudo -E bash -
  $ sudo apt-get update
  $ sudo apt-get install -y nodejs  # install nodejs, npm
  
  $ sudo npm install -g tldr
  $ tldr tar
  ✔ Page not found. Updating cache...
  ⠴ Creating index...
  

  Not work (debian 12). To undo the installation

  sudo npm uninstall -g tldr
  sudo apt-get purge nodejs
  sudo rm -f /etc/apt/sources.list.d/nodesource.list
  sudo rm -f /etc/apt/keyrings/nodesource.gpg
  sudo apt-get update
  

Cheat.sh (no installation)

Cheat.sh Shows Cheat Sheets On The Command Line Or In Your Code Editor. There are different ways to use it. One way does not require to install anything as long as we have the curl command.

curl cheat.sh/tar

curl cht.sh/python/random+list # Python programming language cheat sheet for random list

My test shows cheat.sh can find more commands and it gives colored output.