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0 pointspxc3y ago0 comments

Some of the manpages for utillinux (e.g., chsh, useradd) are pretty barebones and don't include examples, but off the top of my head I can't think of a major GNU utility that doesn't have EXAMPLES sections in its manpages. GNU coreutils, find, sed, and grep all have such a section in their manuals.

What are you thinking of that is example-less?

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stametseater3y ago

GNU ls's manpage has no examples, but it's also a thousand words long so it hardly seems fair to characterize it as bare-bones.

All in all, I find that manpages on Linux are usually pretty good, particularly compared to systems like MacOS where many daemons and utilities seem to have no manpage at all. People are far too quick to slag manpages, which probably has something to do with the `man` utility itself being a bit archaic. Common Linux desktops could probably do a better job of advertising GUI-based manpage readers like khelpcenter.

pxcOP3y ago

I'd like slightly fancier system (no, not info), but being able to look things up without leaving the terminal is so underrated imo. It makes looking things up a lot faster.

Arnavion3y ago

POSIX ls's manpage has examples. Well, one example, of `-laRF`.

But also I can't imagine what good more examples will do anyway. `-lahR` cover the vast majority of common uses.

stametseater3y ago

> -lahR` cover the vast majority of common uses.

For me, 99% of the time I use -ltrh and -ltrha. But instead of -R, I use other utilities like fzf, find, or tree. Tree is really nice for a quick overview of directory structures.

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse

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stametseater3y ago

GNU ls's manpage has no examples, but it's also a thousand words long so it hardly seems fair to characterize it as bare-bones.

pxcOP3y ago

I'd like slightly fancier system (no, not info), but being able to look things up without leaving the terminal is so underrated imo. It makes looking things up a lot faster.

Arnavion3y ago

POSIX ls's manpage has examples. Well, one example, of `-laRF`.

But also I can't imagine what good more examples will do anyway. `-lahR` cover the vast majority of common uses.

stametseater3y ago

> -lahR` cover the vast majority of common uses.

For me, 99% of the time I use -ltrh and -ltrha. But instead of -R, I use other utilities like fzf, find, or tree. Tree is really nice for a quick overview of directory structures.

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse