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August
11, 2003 -
Searching the man pages for Keywords
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Detailed
information about UNIX user commands, UNIX
system administration commands, shells,
important files, and much more can be
found in the pages of the online system
manual, better known as the man
pages. Man pages are accessed by using
the man command and the name of a page for
an argument. For example, the
following command will display the man
page for the Korn shell:
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# man ksh
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ksh, on most
systems, is the name of the Korn shell's
executable file.
This method of displaying information from
the man pages works fine until you find
yourself in a situation where you have a
basic idea of what you are looking for,
but do not know the name of the relevant
man page(s). If the system you are
using is configured to support it, you can
search the descriptions of the man pages
by adding the -k option and a search
string to the man command:
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# man -k
<search_string>
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Doing so
will display a list of pages that contain
your search string.
If you didn't
know that "ksh" was the name of
the man page for the Korn shell, you could
use the following command to return a list
of man pages that contain the string "korn"
in their description:
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# man -k korn
ksh ksh (1)
- KornShell, a standard/restricted command and programming language
rksh ksh (1)
- KornShell, a standard/restricted command and programming language
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Each result
includes the command or keyword, the name of
the man page, the section of the system
manual that contains the page, and the man
page's description. If one of the
results is similar to what you are looking
for, you can view the entire man page using
the man command and the name of the page.
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Learn
more...
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