sf9afk$q7c$1@dont-email.me> <sf9heo$a6v$1@dont-email.me>
On Sat, 14 Aug 2021 22:52:08 +0000, William Unruh wrote:

> Says someone, apparently, who has never looked at the command "find", or
> may other commands. billions of different option combinations, some of
> which work, others of which do not.
>
Quite right: I don't use it because 'locate' is *much* faster and easier
to use, especially if updatedb is run overnight by a cronjob

Similarly, 'apropos' is nearly as fast 'locate' since it only has to scan
the contents of /usr/share/man/* - and in addition, because its scanning
the first line of each manpage, it also matches words of phrases
describing what a program does, so often searching on a word or phrase
describing what a program does means you a suitable program without
knowing its name:

$ apropos 'free space'
e2freefrag (8) - report free space fragmentation information
xfs_spaceman (8) - show free space information about an XFS filesystem

$ apropos 'space used'
space used: nothing appropriate.
$ apropos 'space usage'
df (1) - report file system disk space usage
du (1) - estimate file space usage
du (1p) - estimate file space usage

..... and its no use complaining about how well or badly a manpage is
written: often the only way to fit would be to submit a manpage patch.

Yes, I know some Linux manpages are pretty bad. However, others (those
for bash, sort and awk to name but a few) are excellent and most are
usable.

--
--
Martin | martin at
Gregorie | gregorie dot org