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And you refer to or evaluate an environment variables using a dollar sign ( $ ) before the name:
Getting help
Man pages
Man pages - linux has had built-in help files since the mid-1500's, way before Macs or PCs thought of such things. In linux they're called man pages - short for "manual"; it's not a gender thing (I assume). man intro will give you an introduction to all user commands.
Exercise:
Try "man grep", or "man du", or "man sort" - you'll want these sometime.
Sometimes man lets you down - no man page. Don't fret, try one of these:
- Just type in the command and hit return - it will usually try to help you.
- Type the command followed by one of:
-h-help--help-?and may give you some help.
Sometimes the command by itself will give you short help, and will list the magic option for full help.
Tip: Type the letter q to quit man, j and k/<CR> to move up and down by line, b or spacebar up/down by page. Want to search? Just hit the slash key /, enter the search word and hit enter. These are actually the tools of the less command which man is using.
Command options
Sitting at the computer, you should have some idea what you need to do. There's probably a command to do it. If you have some idea what it starts with, you can type a few characters and hit tab twice to get some help. If you have no idea, you google it or ask someone else. But soon you want those commands to do a bit more - like seeing the sizes of files in addition to their names.
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man pages should detail all options available for a command. Unless there's no man page.
More help please
Sometimes man lets you down - no man page. Don't fret, try one of these:
- Just type in the command and hit return - it will usually try to help you.
- Type the command followed by one of:
-h-help--help-?and may give you some help.
Sometimes the command by itself will give you short help, and will list the magic option for full help.
man pages
Man pages - linux has had built-in help files since the mid-1500's, way before Macs or PCs thought of such things. In linux they're called man pages - short for "manual"; it's not a gender thing (I assume). man intro will give you an introduction to all user commands.
Exercise:
Try "man grep", or "man du", or "man sort" - you'll want these sometime.
Tip: Type the letter q to quit man, j and k/<CR> to move up and down by line, b or spacebar up/down by page. Want to search? Just hit the slash key /, enter the search word and hit enter. These are actually the tools of the less command which man is using.
Basic linux commands you need to know
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