linuxmemes @lemmy.world atmur @lemmy.world 10 mo. ago

every time i can't remember how to use a command

this image comes to mind every time i use man pages

Linux Memes @programming.dev JPDev @programming.dev 10 mo. ago

64 comments

man man
- Is it just me or is man and --help kind of confusing to understand? Idk, I just have difficulty learning the commands that way.
  
  Some man pages include examples, which I always greatly appreciate.
  
  I find --help to be often useful, but man is hard to sell. As a tool to know more details of an option or to know everything that's available, it's great. As a first contact with the CLI tool or a quick lookup, man past the first paragraph is often a waste of time. For most lookups cheat.sh is much quicker.
  
  Though I've recently been using clipea with GPT-4, and it's by far the best experience. Fastest way to have straightforward one-liners that do pretty much what you asked for.
  
  Ha ha ha, no you are most certainly not alone, that's gotta be one of the most common gripes with new users. Those things were written in the 70s and have remained unchanged since. It's a standardization thing. :)
  
  man is self-paging and searchable. It uses some old-school emacs bindings like Ctrl + V from before PgDn was a standard key. So I'm not claiming it's intuitive.
  
  If cmd --help spews a bunch of info to the screen, you basically have to handle it with grep or less or go modern.
  
  That's because you're a woman.
  
  *runs for cover*
- just need to be sure
And then the manpage goes:

ThE fUlL dOcUmEnTaTiOn CaN bE vIeWeD wItH "info blah invocation"

Stop trying to make info a thing. It's not going to be a thing.
- I used a tool yesterday whose manpage told me to look into --help for full list of commands. The audacity!
  
  They could've just copy-pasted it! And --help should be a brief, easy-to-understand list of commands and explanations, not an extension
- Especially when you don't have a US keyboard. How the fuck am I supposed to navigate through the info document when the key combination to follow links is Ctrl+] and ] itself is hidden behind some modifier combo?
  
  Sounds like it needs better localization
- That's basically just GNU programs
tldr
Man is too much for me. I can't handle that many words at once, which is why I like using tldr
- Using u and d instead of page up and down made it much more readable for me, then you don't have a whole page with every button press
man date always makes me chuckle
I first read this like "look, here is a image of a man" (-:
- A miserable pile of secrets
  
  Enough talk… Have at you!
- Ecce homo!
curl cheat.sh/curl
- this will be helpful, but looks like github repo is no longer being maintained
Does this horse have a dog's tail?
I've never used it. Just typing /h -h --help and if that doesn't work then I'm Googling it.
- I legitimately don't understand why people still insist on recommending it. Like it had its place, and it was awesome for what it was, but there are many better ways of displaying that info and better ways of searching for it. If it's the only option, fine. Otherwise, I'm not parsing through that shit in a terminal.
  
  I disagree that there are much better ways. When I have a question while I'm working in the terminal, it's nice to have a searchable manual that's in the terminal.
  
  But I can certainly understand why modern manpages aren't well-developed. That info is already somewhere else. And it's good enough. It's not like I'm paying people to write manpages.
  
  It's learned masochism to use the terminal for everything at this point.
- "help is an invalid command. Use --help for help."
  
  I always feel like an idiot when a read an error message like that.
Yes babe I am real man, do you want to go skateboardz?
spaceballs? oh shit there goes the planet
Guts' theme plays
Back in the 90s
- I was in a very famous TV show...
Man horse beach? Man steed sea? Man pony sand? What?
- You didn't see the battery staple?
  
  That's correct
- You can lead a horse to water...
  
  But you can't make it RTFM?
- man is a command in linux to bring up the manuals/docs
  
  https://www.geeksforgeeks.org/man-command-in-linux-with-examples/
  
  If you're on a linux distro, you could type:
  
  man ls which would fetch you the manual for ls, which lists files and dirs for you. However, I think it's more common for users to use ls --help instead, which would show the same manual information.
  
  (sorry if you already knew this, but it looked almost like you were asking what this means and then a bunch of linux users just joked around without explaining anything XD)
  
  You are a good and kind person.
  
  Here, have this country song: Merle Haggard - Are the Good Times Really Over (I Wish a Buck Was Still Silver)
- Man horse shore?
You mean "history" right? Right?!
- So many times I have looked up a command, used it and then forgotten the syntax. History is a life saver.
  
  You would probably love mcfly https://github.com/cantino/mcfly
- Ctrl + R, what a wonderful phrase.
IT WAS EARTH ALL ALONG!!
Why doesn't he call the avangers is he stupid?
This made me laugh out loud for real.
It's one small step for man.
One giant leap for a horse?

Can horses type yet?
Without man i'm nothing
- That's what she said!
  
  *hides from angry feminists*
- Who are any of us but men?
This reminds me of the etymology of バカ (baka, stupid in Japanese).

I don't know if that's what's intended or not.
Is that a dog?

You've viewed 64 comments.