Unix UltraNewb: How to RTFM

Ah, RTFM: the battle cry of acronym-loving nerds everywhere, which loosely translates into Read The Frackin' Manual.

But where is this coveted Manual? And how does an earnest newb find it? At the Unix command line, it's the man command. The Red Hat Linux Getting Started Guide explains:

The word "man" stands for "manual," a series of online pages which can tell you the purpose of many commands. In a highly condensed format, man pages provide a summary of a command's purpose, the options available, and the syntax which is used to issue the command.

So, for instance, if you wanted to see the man pages for our favorite syncing program, you'd type man rsync at the command line for a description and list of its options and arguments. You can move up and down in the man pages using the arrow keys. To quit a man command, press q.

Man pages can seem scary at first - especially the synopsis bit, with all those letters, dashes and square brackets - but once you get a sense of the man format and construct exactly the command you need using it, it becomes an indispensable tool. Man works in Cygwin on Windows, the Mac Terminal, and of course, the *nix command line.

Use Man Pages for Information [The Official Red Hat Linux Getting Started Guide]