09d44b1ef5
I was in the middle of one of these "projects" when I started on the next, so they wound up all intermixed) Move the mailing list entities from authors.sgml to the new file lists.sgml. Add an entity for majordomo at the same time. Avoid the use of contractions. This revealed some grammer problems, and also has the benefit of helping make things clearer for those people who do make speak English as a their first language.
97 lines
3.5 KiB
Plaintext
97 lines
3.5 KiB
Plaintext
<!-- $Id: basics.sgml,v 1.6 1995/12/14 19:42:34 jfieber Exp $ -->
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<!-- The FreeBSD Documentation Project -->
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<chapt><heading>Unix Basics<label id="basics"></heading>
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<sect>
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<heading>The online manual<label id="basics:man"></heading>
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<p>The most comprehensive documentation on FreeBSD is in
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the form of <em>man pages</em>. Nearly every program
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on the system comes with a short reference manual
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explaining the basic operation and various arguments.
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These manuals can be view with the
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<tt><bf>man</bf></tt> command. Use of the
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<tt><bf>man</bf></tt> command is simple:
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<tscreen>
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<bf>man</bf> <it>command</it>
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</tscreen>
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where <it>command</it> is the name of the command
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you wish to learn about. For example, to learn more about
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<tt><bf>ls</bf></tt> command type:
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<tscreen>
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% <bf>man ls</bf>
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</tscreen>
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<p>The online manual is divided up into numbered
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sections:
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<enum>
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<item>User commands</item>
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<item>System calls and error numbers</item>
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<item>Functions in the C libraries</item>
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<item>Device drivers</item>
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<item>File formats</item>
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<item>Games and other diversions</item>
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<item>Miscellaneous information</item>
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<item>System maintenance and operation commands</item>
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</enum>
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in some cases, the same topic may appear in more than
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one section of the on-line manual. For example, there
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is a <tt><bf>chmod</bf></tt> user command and a
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<tt><bf>chmod()</bf></tt> system call. In this case,
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you can tell the <tt><bf>man</bf></tt> command which
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one you want by specifying the section:
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<tscreen>
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% <bf>man 1 chmod</bf>
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</tscreen>
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which will display the manual page for the user command
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<tt><bf>chmod</bf></tt>. References to a particular
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section of the on-line manual are traditionally placed
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in parenthesis in written documentation, so
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<tt><bf>chmod(1)</bf></tt> refers to the <tt><bf>chmod
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</bf></tt> user command and <tt><bf>chmod(2)</bf></tt>
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refers to the system call.
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<p>This is fine if you know the name of the command and
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simply wish to know how to use it, but what if you cannot recall the
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command name? You can use <tt><bf>man</bf></tt> to
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search for keywords in the command <em>descriptions</em> by
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using the <tt><bf>-k</bf></tt> switch:
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<tscreen>
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% <bf>man -k mail</bf>
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</tscreen>
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With this command you will be presented with a list of
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commands that have the keyword `mail' in their
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descriptions. This is actually functionally equivalent to
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using the <tt><bf>apropos</bf></tt> command.
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<p>So, you are looking at all those fancy commands in <tt>
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/usr/bin</tt> but do not even have the faintest idea
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what most of them actually do? Simply do a
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<tscreen>
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% <bf>cd /usr/bin; man -f *</bf>
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</tscreen>
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or
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<tscreen>
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% <bf>cd /usr/bin; whatis *</bf>
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</tscreen>
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which does the same thing.
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<sect>
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<heading>GNU Info files<label id="basics:info"></heading>
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<p>FreeBSD includes many applications and utilities
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produced by the Free Software Foundation (FSF). In
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addition to man pages, these programs come with more
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extensive hypertext documents called <em>info</em>
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files which can be viewed with the <tt>info</tt>
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command or, if you installed <tt>emacs</tt>, the info
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mode of <tt>emacs</tt>.
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To use the <tt>info(1)</tt> command, simply type:
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<tscreen>% <bf>info</bf></tscreen> For a brief
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introduction, type <tt><bf>h</bf></tt>. For a quick
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command reference, type <tt><bf>?</bf></tt>.
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