when do you usually use the man page for a complex command line tool to answer a question you have?

[jmax@mastodon.social]

@b0rk I date from the days when man pages were a novelty.

If it doesn't have a man page, it isn't finished.

[mikestok@mstdn.ca]

@b0rk it depends on how well I know the tool.

If I’m familiar with the tool and its terminology then the man page is where I go after trying g the --help flag or its equivalent.

For me they are fine reference material, but I usually end up using a search engine…

[sgharms@techhub.social]

@b0rk using #freebsd and having started on SCO Unix, I’m used to better than average man pages. And I learned sco before the web: so man and Usenet.

—help is my first stop these days.

Knowing how to use man means I can work offline too. So practicing that skill when a fallback is present is a worthy investment

[spv@mastodon.spv.sh]

@simontatham @b0rk "... another possibility is that you don't even yet know which _program_ you want to use ..." apropos is your friend, my friend

[louisb@mastodon.tetaneutral.net]

I've been scolded way too often by my systems teacher back in the day that I automatically use --help first, then man <command> then, and in a last resort googling for what I'm trying to do

[kaleissin@wandering.shop]

@b0rk @karabaic For the BSD's, you kinda expect there to be man-pages. For linux, it's a crap shoot if they exist or not :(

[ori@hj.9fs.net]

I voted 'first' because it's close enough; it's usually second after '-?'

(-? is not be a valid argument in many programs, but most dump their usage on an invalid argument, and it's easier than typing --help)

[master_squinter@infosec.exchange]

@b0rk
I tend to look for examples close to what I want to do, or tutorials. I would love if man pages were more consistent in giving clear examples for common use cases. This is much easier to parse quickly than detailed explanations.

[matthieu@mastodon.weber.fi.eu.org]

@b0rk for rsync, find or ls I use the man page. For ffmpeg or imagemagick I use duck duck go 🙂

[csgordon@discuss.systems]

@b0rk my experience is that I can often figure out what I need from the man page in one of 3 ways:
- often the first paragraph(ish) clarifies whatever I was confused about
- the EXAMPLES section (usually near the end) often has exactly the example I'd want
- often searching the man page ('/' to search, 'n' for next result) for keywords finds me what I need (another option) pretty fast

I'm skewed towards this from years of offline computer use (work on trains with crappy/no wifi, though it started with an offline desktop in my room in high school before wifi was a thing), but also reinforced by recent nonsense in both AI summaries and keyword-spamming sites...

[ianthetechie@fosstodon.org]

@b0rk other = on FreeBSD I have found the documentation pretty useful for most commands. On Linux, much less so.

[neilk@xoxo.zone]

@b0rk Yestwrday I wanted to use exiftool to strip all tags from an image. Couldn’t easily find it in the man page so I piped it to an AI and it spat out the answer. I’m not sure if this was better, or more ecological. But Google was going to give me an AI summary anyway amidst AI slop posts so why not skip the middleman

[qkslvrwolf@mastodon.social]

@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.

[minkiu@mastodon.social]

@b0rk I agree with the sentiment, and I think that's why I installed tldr.sh again recently 🥲 granted that's far less in depth that what is provided by the man pages, but examples are concise.

[renedario@raphus.social]

@b0rk i like to look first and then search for examples elsewhere. otherwise my search may not be relevant

[chaos_99@fosstodon.org]

@b0rk I'd say I'd indeed look at the man page first. I've still voted "other", as I immediately turn away if it doesn't give a usage example in the first few lines.
I need to know if it's the right tool for the job, and only very few man pages declare what it does properly. I often need stackoverflow or blogs for that.
Then I return regularly to the man page to look up syntax of what I already know is there.

[ryanparsley@mastodon.social]

@b0rk I have a lingering guilt about not going to man pages first, but often a blog post has been better crafted than the friendly manual. Not all manuals but enough to encourage an antipattern in search first.

I totally agree with your motivation to address/revaluate that.

[rhold@norden.social]

@b0rk i remember this: when i learned about man and started using it, the stuff i wanted to know usually was on page 5 (quick reference / parameters). But i always forget that so it felt frustrating and abandoned them.

Instead I use --help command options. I only go to man when i want to learn the full and long version. But sometimes I do.

[tmcfarlane@toot.community]

@b0rk I generally go to `--help` first, and then a man page, often looking for the EXAMPLE section.

[djfiander@code4lib.social]

@sgharms @b0rk Same here. BSD documentation is usually very good, and complex commands usually have examples that cover the common cases.

Linux man pages, on the other hand, are usually crap.