do you have a favourite man page?
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@b0rk it's an uncool example these days but...
i always really appreciated how `man perl` links to 40+ other man pages that collectively describe the entire language and its standard library and tools. so if you are trying to learn about it everything you need is there and can be browsed or searched for. the prose is fairly engaging and well-written.
(these days online might make more sense but at the time having it available offline in a very lightweight format that was readable from the terminal was great.)
P.S. the manual pages are actually produced by perldoc which is also a very cool related tool.
@d6 this is so cool, I've never looked at this before! makes me want to find out who wrote them.
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@aredridel @b0rk oh, my favorite there is perllol(1)
@arrjay @aredridel this is awesome, I love `perlcheat`, I've never seen anything like that in a man page
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do you have a favourite man page? thinking of writing a short blog post exploring man pages and what makes a good one and I'd love some more examples
my contribution: I think it's cool that `man curl` includes an example for every single option
@b0rk Off the dome, I feel like I remember the man page for find almost always getting me where I needed to go
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do you have a favourite man page? thinking of writing a short blog post exploring man pages and what makes a good one and I'd love some more examples
my contribution: I think it's cool that `man curl` includes an example for every single option
@b0rk I was always partial to `man man`.
Great to introduce people to `man` so they can bootstrap their command-line-fu.
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@bretthaines the Mac grep man page?
@b0rk yes, my work computer is a mac so that's the one I pull up more often. I forgot the Linux one is different
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do you have a favourite man page? thinking of writing a short blog post exploring man pages and what makes a good one and I'd love some more examples
my contribution: I think it's cool that `man curl` includes an example for every single option
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do you have a favourite man page? thinking of writing a short blog post exploring man pages and what makes a good one and I'd love some more examples
my contribution: I think it's cool that `man curl` includes an example for every single option
@b0rk i always think
hier(7)is really neat -
do you have a favourite man page? thinking of writing a short blog post exploring man pages and what makes a good one and I'd love some more examples
my contribution: I think it's cool that `man curl` includes an example for every single option
@b0rk the one I've used the most is `man bash`, because it's not just a man page, it's the documentation for the whole scripting language!
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do you have a favourite man page? thinking of writing a short blog post exploring man pages and what makes a good one and I'd love some more examples
my contribution: I think it's cool that `man curl` includes an example for every single option
I love the man bash
But although the lvm commands man. With useful examples that cover lot of case ! -
do you have a favourite man page? thinking of writing a short blog post exploring man pages and what makes a good one and I'd love some more examples
my contribution: I think it's cool that `man curl` includes an example for every single option
@b0rk I do like it too, even thought it makes the man page 7195 lines long
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do you have a favourite man page? thinking of writing a short blog post exploring man pages and what makes a good one and I'd love some more examples
my contribution: I think it's cool that `man curl` includes an example for every single option
@b0rk I don't believe to have a favourite. Yet, due to the rule (rather 'tip') "'Select' Isn't Broken", select(2) and the corresponding story behind the tip from the book "Pragmatic Programmer" comes to my mind
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@b0rk I do like it too, even thought it makes the man page 7195 lines long
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do you have a favourite man page? thinking of writing a short blog post exploring man pages and what makes a good one and I'd love some more examples
my contribution: I think it's cool that `man curl` includes an example for every single option
@b0rk my favourite was an early version of less(1), whose one-line synopsis was:
less - better than more(1)
Which it was, because you could go _backwards_... that was the first program I ever compiled from downloaded source.
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do you have a favourite man page? thinking of writing a short blog post exploring man pages and what makes a good one and I'd love some more examples
my contribution: I think it's cool that `man curl` includes an example for every single option
I think my favourite man page example so far is this rsync man page (via @shnizmuffin) https://www.man7.org/linux/man-pages/man1/rsync.1.html
it gives examples BEFORE giving an exhaustive list of options!
the synopsis just says "rsync [OPTION...] SRC... [DEST]" instead of giving you an exhaustive list of options like "-ABCFGHILOPRSTUWabcdefghiklmnopqrstuvwxy1%"!
there's an "OPTION SUMMARY" section that gives you a 1-line summary of each option! (this feels SO SO much useful than the normal SYNOPSIS to me)
(2/?)
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do you have a favourite man page? thinking of writing a short blog post exploring man pages and what makes a good one and I'd love some more examples
my contribution: I think it's cool that `man curl` includes an example for every single option
@b0rk it's also my favourite hairstyle
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@b0rk i always think
hier(7)is really neat@pounce that's cool, I'd never seen that
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@shnizmuffin what do you like about it? (also: you mean this one right? https://linux.die.net/man/1/rsync)
i like that it takes a different approach to the SYNOPSIS and puts examples before the comprehensive list of all options, I haven't seen that a lot
@b0rk It leads with examples from most common to least common, and sorts its many options following similar logic.
It's basically ...
1. WTF am I looking at. (--verbose et al)
2. Sensible defaults (--archive)
3. How do I change one thing (--no-OPTION)
4. Filepath stuff
5. Link stuff
6. Permission stuff
7. File metadata stuff
8. Config stuff
9. Filter stuff
10. Shit one person needed once
11. --human-readable
12. please don't run forever
13. --version, --help -
I think my favourite man page example so far is this rsync man page (via @shnizmuffin) https://www.man7.org/linux/man-pages/man1/rsync.1.html
it gives examples BEFORE giving an exhaustive list of options!
the synopsis just says "rsync [OPTION...] SRC... [DEST]" instead of giving you an exhaustive list of options like "-ABCFGHILOPRSTUWabcdefghiklmnopqrstuvwxy1%"!
there's an "OPTION SUMMARY" section that gives you a 1-line summary of each option! (this feels SO SO much useful than the normal SYNOPSIS to me)
(2/?)
@b0rk @shnizmuffin if something needs a solid man page, it's probably rsync.
Destroyer of files.
With great power comes great responsibility. -
do you have a favourite man page? thinking of writing a short blog post exploring man pages and what makes a good one and I'd love some more examples
my contribution: I think it's cool that `man curl` includes an example for every single option
@b0rk@jvns.ca i often work offline, so i like long and elaborate man pages that go into every absurd detail but also note in-program help mechanisms
nvimbecause it provides a jump start to:Tutorand:help quickrefzshallbecause it explains All the syntax
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do you have a favourite man page? thinking of writing a short blog post exploring man pages and what makes a good one and I'd love some more examples
my contribution: I think it's cool that `man curl` includes an example for every single option
@b0rk In the attention to detail category, the BUG detailed in the NetBSD sleep(1) man page is a favourite:
It's searchable.
