Linux man pages remain the best source of information for using Linux command line tools. You don’t need an internet connection to instantly get a description of how a utility works and an explanation of all of it’s flags, options and syntax.
Using a man page is as simple as running:
man <COMMAND>
The problem is that quickly parsing all the information is difficult. These tips will make your life more efficient whenever you turn to man for information.
Command Syntax
The command syntax is the order in which you need to type the various parts of a command to get it to run. This is sometimes not obvious when you try a command.
The syntax is spelled out at the beginning of the man page in the SYNOPSIS section.
This information is always at the top of the man page. Here is the syntax for rsync:
rsync [OPTION...] SRC... [DEST]
This tells you that first enter rsync next the options, then the SRC or source files, and finally the DEST or destination which is where you want the files to go.
Searching
When you run man the information is displayed in a pager. The default found on almost 100% of Linux systems is less. less comes with lots of helpful features that you can use when you are reading a man page.
Firstly, you can always access the help information by hitting h in the man page.
Search forward
This search will start from the cursors current location to the end of the man page. Just enter:
/
Followed by your search term then hit ENTER. Here --delete is searched for:
/--delete
The man page will jump to the first instance of --delete and highlight it.
Jump to the next match by pressing n. You can keep hitting n until you reach the end of the man page. If you want to go back to the previous match hit N.
Search backwards
Pess:
?
To search from cursor’s position backwards towards the top of the man page.
Search multiple patterns
If you want to search for either patter1 or patter2 separate the search terms with the | character:
/color|colour
Jumping to the top or bottom
If you need to get to the top the man page press:
g
And to get to the bottom press:
G
Configuration Files (man 5)
man pages not only explain Linux commands but also their configuration files. man has various sections, the default is 1 while 5 is for configuration files.
Access section 5 as follows:
man 5 <COMMAND>
E.g.:
man 5 locale
There is also commonly a man page for specific configuration files which will tell you all the available configuration options e.g.
man locale.conf
Pipe man to standard output
If you want to dump a man page into a file you can redirect it as you would expect:
man rsync >rsync-man-page.txt
Or you can use grep or other command line tools you just have to use the | to do so e.g.:
man rsync | grep "delete"