On: Stupid Unix Tricks

[s_gourichon]

$ help command

command: command [-pVv] command [arg ...] Execute a simple command or display information about commands.

    Runs COMMAND with ARGS suppressing  shell function lookup, or display
    information about the specified COMMANDs.  Can be used to invoke commands
    on disk when a function with the same name exists.
    
    Options:
      -p    use a default value for PATH that is guaranteed to find all of
            the standard utilities
      -v    print a description of COMMAND similar to the `type' builtin
      -V    print a more verbose description of each COMMAND
    
    Exit Status:
    Returns exit status of COMMAND, or failure if COMMAND is not found.

[m463 → s_gourichon]

Thank you.

I never knew about help to describe a builtin shell command. normally searching for something like "command" in the bash man page would be very tedious.

also: help echo

[dTal → m463]

How little we expect from our computers. "help <command>" should be the first thing you expect to work.

[imihai1988 → m463]

i do think 'man command' should bring up the specific man page for this, so there is no need to search into the bash man. this works with most builtin shell commands. e.g. 'man ls' is a thing

[stragies → imihai1988]

On (at least) Debian systems (, and probably many more) `ls` is not a built-in, but an external binary (`/usr/bin/ls`) is used.

`which ls` and `help ls` will show you, if it is similar on your system.

[imihai1988 → stragies]

It does't need to be a built-in to have a man page (many first party and third party libraries come with their own man pages).

[m463 → imihai1988]

"man command" on linux says "no manual entry for command"

"man echo" on linux describes /usr/bin/echo "help echo" describes the builtin.

on the othe hand, "man command" on mac os x gives a huge manpage of builtins (still hard to search for the common word "command")