Even More Help

Even More Help!

Just when you thought you couldn't find any more help, there is more…there is even a built-in help system for specific commands. Why would you use this if you already know how to use the man pages? Well, the man pages aren't as easy to use as the built-in help system because they take more time to load and aren't as quick to reference. For many Unix-based commands if you need to find help, --help provides the information you need. In some cases, it might even be as simple as just typing h, or -?. Remember, Unix distributions can have small differences, and you may be able to abbreviate in one distribution whereas in another, you may not. In addition, this method may not work if the help system is damaged or unavailable.

To view the built-in help for the date command, type the following:

 >date --help Usage: date [OPTION]... [+FORMAT]   or:  date [OPTION] [MMDDhhmm[[CC]YY][.ss]] Display the current time in the given FORMAT, or set the  system date.   -d, --date=STRING        display time described by STRING,                             not 'now'   -f, --file=DATEFILE      like --date once for each line of                             DATEFILE   -r, --reference=FILE     display the last modification time                             of FILE   -R, --rfc-822            output RFC-822 compliant date                             string   -s, --set=STRING         set time described by STRING   -u, --utc, --universal   print or set Coordinated Universal                             Time       --help               display this help and exit       --version            output version information and                             exit ... 

This information is much easier to read and utilize, but it does not contain the depth of information that the man pages contain.