freebsd-dev/share/doc/handbook/basics.sgml

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<chapt><heading>Unix Basics</heading>

      <sect>
	<heading>The online manual</heading>

	<p>The most comprehensive documentation on FreeBSD is in
	  the form of <em>man pages</em>.  Nearly every program
	  on the system comes with a short reference manual
	  explaining the basic operation and various argument.
	  These manuals can be view with the
	  <tt><bf>man</bf></tt> command.  Use of the
	  <tt><bf>man</bf></tt> command is simple:
	  <tscreen>
	    <bf>man</bf> <it>command</it>
	  </tscreen>
	  where <it>command</it> is the name of the command
	  you wish to learn about.  For example, to learn more about
	  <tt><bf>ls</bf></tt> command type:
	  <tscreen>
	    % <bf>man ls</bf>
	  </tscreen>

	<p>The online manual is divided up into numbered
	  sections:
	  <enum>
	    <item>User commands</item>
	    <item>System calls and error numbers</item>
	    <item>Functions in the C libraries</item>
	    <item>Device drivers</item>
	    <item>File formats</item>
	    <item>Games and other diversions</item>
	    <item>Miscellaneous information</item>
	    <item>System maintenance and operation commands</item>
	  </enum>
	  in some cases, the same topic may appear in more than
	  one section of the on-line manual.  For example, there
	  is a <tt><bf>chmod</bf></tt> user command and a
	  <tt><bf>chmod()</bf></tt> system call.  In this case,
	  you can tell the <tt><bf>man</bf></tt> command which
	  you want by specifying the section:
	  <tscreen>
	    % <bf>man 1 chmod</bf>
	  </tscreen>
	  which will display the manual page for the user command
	  <tt><bf>chmod</bf></tt>.

	<p>This is fine if you know the name of the command and
	  forgot how to use it, but what if you cannot recall the
	  command name?  You can use <tt><bf>man</bf></tt> to
	  search for keywords in the command <em>descriptions</em> by
	  using the <tt><bf>-k</bf></tt> switch:
	  <tscreen>
	    % <bf>man -k mail</bf>
	  </tscreen>
	  With this command you will be presented with a list of
	  commands that have the keyword `mail' in their
	  descriptions.

      <sect>
	<heading>GNU Info files</heading>

	<p>FreeBSD includes many applications and utilities
	  produced by the Free Software Foundation (FSF).  In
	  addition to man pages, these programs come with more
	  extensive hypertext documents called <em>info</em>
	  files which can be viewed with the <tt>info</tt>
	  command or, if you installed <tt>emacs</tt>, the info
	  mode of <tt>emacs</tt>.
	      
          To use the <tt>info(1)</tt> command, simply type:
          <tscreen>% <bf>info</bf></tscreen> For a brief
          introduction, type <tt><bf>h</bf></tt>, and for a quick
          command reference, type <tt><bf>?</bf></tt>.