I Didn’t Learn Unix by Reading All the Manpages

Re:I Didn’t Learn Unix by Reading All the Manpages by m463 on Wednesday May 24, 2023 @05:50PM (#36064311)

I disagree - the find manpage is significantly better than the grep manpage because of one aspect:

EXAMPLES

Examples are critical to comprehension, are immensely practical, yet are often viewed as fluff.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:I Didn’t Learn Unix by Reading All the Manpages by motohagiography on Wednesday May 24, 2023 @11:07PM (#36066673)

After about 30y of using *nix of one kind or another, I only use the EXAMPLES section of man pages as I know that most writers write to sound out their ideas, and the first bits are worse than useless. If there isn't one, I go to stackoverflow.

The same style extends to library documentation, where you have functions and arguments with types and no other context. It's basically for posterity.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:I Didn’t Learn Unix by Reading All the Manpages by stodor89 on Thursday May 25, 2023 @01:08AM (#36067231)

Agreed, lack of examples was my biggest gripe with the manly pages when I was a Linux newbie. The most frustrating part is, you know they do it on purpose, so that you have to read the entire thing! News flash, I'm here because I'm stuck and want to get unstuck ASAP, not because I'm bored and want to learn the intricate details of find/grep/whatever.

[ Parent | on HN ]