folak

What is the differences between "man" and "info" command

https://lemmy.world/post/7110853

What is the differences between "man" and "info" command - Lemmy.World

Hi, I saw there https://askubuntu.com/questions/9325/what-is-the-difference-between-man-and-info-documentation [https://askubuntu.com/questions/9325/what-is-the-difference-between-man-and-info-documentation] that info is “better” than man because is outdated. Still right in 2023 ?

Oct 21, 2023 at 10:16amWeb
Show threadtrachemysOct 21, 2023
I completely forgot about info.
Show threadrecarsionOct 21, 2023
There’s also whatis for short summaries
Show threadaquasteelOct 21, 2023
And don’t forget apropos. I can’t remember what it does, though.
Show threadScottEOct 21, 2023
It’s just the same thing as man -k.
Show threadFree Palestine 🇵🇸Oct 21, 2023
I’ve been using this one pretty often lately
Show threadkevinOct 21, 2023
9 times out of 10, what I want is tldr (tldr.sh). There are a bunch of terminal interfaces for it, I use .
tldr pages

Simplified and community-driven man pages

Show threadstepanzakOct 21, 2023
Please remove the exclamation mark before your link, you are making it an image that obviously can’t be loaded.
Show threadkevinOct 21, 2023
Oops, thanks for the heads up! No idea where that came from
Show threadiusearchbtwOct 21, 2023
man is standard Unix manual pages, while info is a documentation format introduced/popularised by GNU. info pages usually have a lot more information (sometimes including tutorials, guided examples, links to different pages and sections, etc (depending on the project maintainer obviously)) but man pages are the standard and basically everything has one. If you run info [program] for something without a dedicated info page, it will show the man page instead.
Show threadglad_catOct 21, 2023
Info is supposedly more modern, like a website. But it’s unusable and as annoying as emacs. Man is good enough.
Show threadTurboTurboOct 21, 2023
Why the emacs hate?
Show threadglad_catOct 21, 2023
I love emacs and I used it a lot with org-mode, but you need weeks to master it, and it’s a PITA to configure.
Show threadfolkravOct 21, 2023
You can find something annoying and not hate it. Linux is annoying in so many ways, yet I love it.
Show threadRailcar8095Oct 21, 2023
One offers info, the other mansplains /S
Show threadSpicySquidOct 21, 2023
Well… I guess I have been living under a rock. Today is the first time to have heard of info. I have been using man for well over 2 decades now.
Show threadpalordrolapOct 21, 2023

Surprising you haven't come across a man page that basically says "We couldn't be bothered putting everything in here, check out the info page on it instead."

I feel like I find myself on one of those every 6 months or so.

Show threadBaumGeistOct 22, 2023

That’s funny, I had the opposite experience. When I found out that info was the GNU projects recommended way of documentation, I was all on board. Then I tried using it, and it couldn’t find most CLI software I used. So I downloaded the texinfo archives… and that still lacked probably 50% of the commands I tried to look up.

Then I searched up how to get info pages for this or that tool, and someone on StackOverflow had said that it was woefully incomplete and outdated at this point.

I think I’ll give it another try and report back

Show threadjsdzOct 21, 2023
The “info” thing was a misguided attempt by a crazed bunch of emacs zealots to usurp the rightful position of “man”. Probably GNU’s worst idea. It persisted in having some popularity for a decade or more but is now mostly forgotten I think. Despite having used Debian for a decade or more I’ve only just now found out that info doesn’t even get installed by default any more.
Show threadInfiltrated_ad8271Oct 21, 2023
Just because it's theirs? I figured it would be because of an alleged gender issue, for the same reason some are trying to do away with whitelists/blacklists and the like.
Show threadjsdzOct 21, 2023
No, nothing to do with that sort of thing. The idea was that it’d be all hypertexty and therefore better.
Show threadiusearchbtwOct 21, 2023
Eh, to be honest, manpages aren’t particularly good as either documentation or quick references (hence the popularity of tldr), and info is intended primarily for the sort of long-form, comprehensive documentation that would be awkward to fit in a manpage. Also, texinfo documents can easily be exported to HTML, so one format can be used for both online and offline docs. It’s an admirable effort, if nothing else.
Show threadjsdzOct 21, 2023
I’d have liked it a lot better it had been intended and used as a place to put the more extensive documentation that isn’t really appropriate for a man page, while leaving the man pages as they were. Instead, I learned about it back in the day by being frequently annoyed at missing man pages for basic tools, which had been replaced with suggestions to look at ‘info’ instead, which always seemed to be much less concise and have a worse UI.
Show threadkugiyasanOct 21, 2023
I wasn’t a huge fan of manpages either until I got a kernel class at uni. The man pages for syscalls and library calls are super well made.
Show threadmceplOct 21, 2023
Actually sadly remember python-docs provided as info document.
Show threadTurboTurboOct 21, 2023
Can you provide any source that it was created or initiated by what you call ‘a crazed bunch of emacs zealots’, or that the goal was to ‘unsurp the rightful position of “man”’. Quite bold statements that are unlikely to be true imho.
Show threadWord of MouthOct 23, 2023
Emacs zealot here … can confirm we’re like this ;)
Show threadmacallikOct 21, 2023
My impression
tldr/cheat: Explains most popular arguments using as little words as possible
man: Explains the entire command using a more technical tone
info: Explains the entire command in slightly more informal tone. Can feel wordier as a result, but on the flipside it connects alternative/related commands in a logical way
Show threadDreamButtOct 21, 2023

Personally I’m a fan of cheat.sh

For instance to get info on curl you can:

curl cheat.sh/curl
Show threadfolkravOct 21, 2023

I switched to tldr, but for the longest time I just used a wrapper function that did exactly this in my shell configuration.

function cheatsh() { curl cheat.sh/"$1" }