Macintosh Terminal Pocket Guide

Getting Help

If you need more information than this book provides, there are several things you can do.

Run the man command

The man command displays an online manual page, or manpage, for a given program. For example, to learn about listing files with ls, run:

➜ man ls

To search for manpages by keyword for a particular topic, use the -k option followed by the keyword:

➜ man -k database

Run the info command

The info command is a text-based, menu-driven help system covering some important Terminal commands and applications:

➜ info ls

While info is running, some useful keystrokes are:

• To get help, type h

• To quit, type q

• To page forward and backward, use the space bar and Backspace keys

• To jump between hyperlinks, press Tab

• To follow a hyperlink, press Enter

If info has no documentation on a given program, it displays the program’s manpage. For a listing of available documentation, type info by itself. To learn how to navigate the info system, type info info.

Use the --help option (if any)

Some commands respond to the option --help by printing a short help message. Try:

➜ diff --help

If the output is longer than the screen, pipe it into the less program to display it in pages (press q to quit):

➜ diff --help | less

Examine the directory /usr/share/doc

This directory contains supporting documents for several programs. For example, files for the bash shell are found in /usr/share/doc/bash.

Mac-specific websites

Some great sites for asking OS X questions are Mac OS X Hints (http://hintsforums.macworld.com/) and ...