Learning Linux Commands
If you are a complete newbie to Linux, or if you “know enough to be dangerous, then here are some pointers that may help.
One of the great things about Linux is that, even though the operating system is extensible through the addition of arbitrary commands, there are standards for documenting such commands. Because of these standards, not only is it easy to find out what a command does and how it works, but its easy to find out that these commands exist in the first place, even if you don’t know their names.
Commands About Commands:
- man Display the manual for a command
- whatis Display a summary of a command (rather than the entire manual)
- apropos Display a list of commands that pertain to (are apropos to) a keyword
- whereis Display information about the location of a command: the executable, the source code (if any), and the man pages.
- which Display which version of a command will execute (for when there are two, or more, commands with the same name installed on the system).
MAN In previous tips, we mentioned the MAN command. MAN stands for manual. It is the main resource for displaying the documentation (a.k.a. œman pages) for any particular command. For example, to find out how the LS command works, you would enter
man ls
The man command brings up the first page of the manual, and then waits for navigation keystrokes. The three most commonly used navigation controls are PageUp, PageDown and the letter q (quit). Of course, man has its own man pages.
man man
WHATIS The whatis command is actually an alias for using the man command with the -f switch (and -f is shorthand for whatis). So, all of the following are equivalent.
whatis ls
man -f ls
man –whatis ls
Tags: apropos, arbitrary_commands, Code, executable, extensible, keystrokes, Linux, most_commonly_used, navigation_controls, pertain, source_code, whatis_command
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