On Feb 26, 2014, at 8:19 AM, Ralph Corderoy <ra...@inputplus.co.uk> wrote:
> Hi Walter, > >> Man pages are not tutorials or complete manuals > > Yes they are, or should be. They used to be. I learnt Perl 4 from > perl(1). Back then it was a single long man page, well-written by an > experienced Unix hand, Larry Wall. Notwithstanding the height of perl (1), Man pages are not meant to be treatises. They are meant to be quickly accessed, searchable reference. There is a very big difference from reading 200 pages sequentially, and skimming 10 pages or less looking for a synopsis of what a command does, why, and what options it provides, or illustrating examples of how to use something. While there is a lot to be learned in man pages (or, at least, I would like to think so given the time I spent on the topic), that does not make them books on the subject. Many of the longest man pages are not very readable, as the terminal is not a comfortable medium to read a very long article. People also tend to search for the relevant option, and very verbose pages backfire on them. > There was _The Unix Programming Environment_ > which, coming from K&R, was how I learnt Unix existed. Indeed. And there is a difference between expecting K&R in a man page, or reference for printf (3). I would not want to read K&R in man (1), no matter how fond I am of that tool. Best -F _________________________________________ -- "'Problem' is a bleak word for challenge" - Richard Fish (Federico L. Lucifredi) - flucifredi at acm.org - GnuPG 0x4A73884C