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 One thing, and I don't know that this is solveable or maybe it was supposed to be solved by info pages but those were hard to memorize how to use, is learning the capabilities of a tool like...up front and at the top.
It's so hard to find the ingredients I need to concoct the correct incantation from man pages, even when I've done the thing with the tool before.
And sometimes you find things that SEEM like what you need but aren't.
Julia Evans
excited for the mastodon rise