16 Nov
2018
16 Nov
'18
11:31 p.m.
On 11/16/18, Larry McVoy <lm(a)mcvoy.com> wrote:
I think there was a help at one point but it got lost. PWB maybe?
There is still apropos which can be useful.
Except for two things:
(1) You have to know to type "apropos" in the first place. Completely
non-obvious to the newbies who really need it.
(2) I don't know how apropos is implemented, but it appears to be a
rather simple-minded (as opposed to the DWIM-style search of Google
and its friends) textual search engine for man pages. I never got the
hang of it. For me it always either turned up nothing or produced
reams of hits--too big a haystack to find the needle of info I was
looking for.
Very much a stylistic thing, and a matter of taste IMO. As you say,
the command interface to Unix has a steep learning curve, but it is a
system designed by experts for experts.
-Paul W.