when do you usually use the man page for a complex command line tool to answer a question you have? (like git, openssl, rsync, curl, etc)
(edit: no need to say "i use --help then man")
i'm very curious about everyone who says "I'd look there first", if I want to figure out how to do something new I think I'll usually google how to do it rather than look at the man page, and then maybe later look at the man page to look up the details
(I've gotten enough of these answers:
- "I like that man pages don't require changing context"
- "with the man page I know I have the right version of the docs")
@b0rk I search for tools where I already know the man page is unhelpful (either too small or there's just a million options that make a whole language to learn to do basic stuff).
Which is quite a lot tbh, but I do absolutely start out with the official documentation on practically everything. Answers and mistake-preventions are almost always found in there the quickest, because mistakes consume a ton of time.
Julia Evans
groxx