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Getting help!

Reading the man pages​

If you’re unsure about what a command does, or its specific syntax, you can type man followed by the command. For example,

man ls

produces the following output:

LS(1)                            User Commands                           LS(1)

NAME
       ls - list directory contents

SYNOPSIS
       ls [OPTION]... [FILE]...

DESCRIPTION
       List  information  about  the FILEs (the current directory by default).
       Sort entries alphabetically if none of -cftuvSUX nor --sort  is  speci‐
       fied.

       Mandatory  arguments  to  long  options are mandatory for short options
       too.

       -a, --all
              do not ignore entries starting with .

       -A, --almost-all
              do not list implied . and ..

       --author
 Manual page ls(1) line 1 (press h for help or q to quit)

Use the arrows on your keyboard to scroll up and down the manual; then press q to exit when you’re done reading.

Note that options, like commands, are case-sensitive - so -a and -A are different options!

Top tip

A useful thing to do in a man page is search - you can do this by pressing / and then typing the string you want to search for. The n key then cycles through the search results.

For example if you want to know what the -l option does, you could type /-l<enter> and then keep pressing n until you find the description of the (lower case) -l option.

Seeing the in-built help for commands​

Alternatively, you can often get help by typing the command name followed by --help (or sometimes just -h), to see how it's used. For example to see how ls can be used:

ls --help

(This works on some systems and not others.)

Help! I'm stuck!​

If at any point you seem to be 'stuck', don't panic! Here are a few things to try:

  • If you are inside a man page as described above (or using less) - press q to quit back to the command prompry.
  • Otherwise, the key combination ctrl-c (<control> and c keys pressed together) will probably help. They will cancel any current command and get you back to the prompt. See this page for more information.

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Next steps​

Next, go and read about the standard command syntax.