Manual
6. Online documentation
The online documentation can be very useful for obtaining information on:
- The purpose of a command
- The syntax and options of a command
- How-to for an application
We can obtain this documentation from various sources:
- The manual: the man command
- Info files: the info command
- HOW-TOs and hands-on documentation: the /usr/share/doc/ directory.
The manual: the man command
Accessing the manual page:
man [command]
man [option] [command]
$ man ls $ man man $ man -S5 passwd, $ man -k keyword
Use of the man command
| Section | Contents |
|---|---|
| 1 | User commands |
| 2 | System calls |
| 3 | Functions / libraries |
| 4 | Special files and peripherals |
| 5 | File formats and conventions |
| 6 | Games |
| 7 | Macros |
| 8 | System administration commands |
| 9 | Core (Kernel) |
Information layout on a manual page
Here is the presentation layout schema used in the manual:
| NAME | Name of the command |
| SYNOPSIS | Command's usage summary |
| DESCRIPTION | Detailed description of the command |
| OPTIONS | Explanation for each of the command's options |
| ENVIRONMENT | Lists the names and values of the environment variables used by the command |
| EXAMPLES | Examples of use |
| FILES | Description of files used by the command |
| SEE ALSO | Suggests reference pages on related topics |
| WARNINGS | Displays uses which may cause problems with this command |
| DIAGNOSTICS | Explains the meaning of diagnostic messages which may be outputted by the command |
| BUGS | Enumerates known bugs affected this command |
