Learning about Commands, Part I

Learning about Commands, Part I

There are a number of ways to learn about the commands available
in Linux. First, I’ll show you how to find out more through your
own system, and then we’ll get to external online and print
resources. Let’s start with the main commands for getting help:
man, info, apropos,
and whatis. You can find
information about most Linux commands by typing:

man command

Such as:

man ls

man pages aren’t necessarily
the most newbie-friendly material in the world, but if you’re just
trying to look up what flag does what then this is a good place to
go. Practice also makes perfect. The more man pages you read, and the more you use Linux, the
more it all starts to make sense. You can learn more about the
man command itself by typing:

man man

You can move up and down through a man page using the arrow keys and Page Up and Page
Down, and use the spacebar to move down as well. When you’re
finished reading the page, press Q to close it.

Next is info. At the bottom
of a man page, you’ll often
see something similar to:

      The  full  documentation for ls is maintained as a Texinfo manual.  If
      the info and ls programs are properly installed at your site, the  com-
      mand

              info ls

      should give you access to the complete manual.

Type info ls and you’ll see:

To just read what’s on the page, you can use Page Up, Page Down,
or the arrow keys. If you want to select a “link” to follow in
this document, use the Tab key to move through the menu options
until you find the one you want, and then press Enter. You can
also move from topic to topic by pressing N to go to the next
topic, and P to go to the previous topic. Pressing U brings you
back to the main page.

You can learn more about the info command itself by typing man info, and you can learn more
about how to use info once you’re in it by typing:

info info

Next week: More helpful tips for learning about
commands