• wuphysics87@lemmy.ml
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      2 minutes ago

      I can appreciate that. Appologies if you know this already, but just don’t like them. Here are some tips.

      It helps a lot to get title/subtitle/flag highlighting. By default man pages are hard to use simply because of how dense they are. It’s much easier to skim when you can separate the parts you are looking for up front from the text.

      Don’t forget ‘/’, ‘n’, and ‘N’. First way to use man pages more effectively is to search them easily. And you can search via regex. Often I’m looking for more info on a particular flag. So I’ll press ‘/’ followed by ‘^ *-g’. For a g flag.

      Take notes on the side. It saves you time later. Your future self will thank you. And you learn a lot by skimming them.

      Man pages can be intimidating/confusing, but, imho, it’s worth training that skill. Even if you are slower up front, it’s totally worth it.