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<!-- $Id: basics.sgml,v 1.1.1.1.4.3 1995-10-22 00:50:23 jfieber Exp $ -->
<!-- The FreeBSD Documentation Project -->
<chapt><heading>Unix Basics<label id="basics"></heading>
<sect>
<heading>The online manual<label id="basics:man"></heading>
<p>The most comprehensive documentation on FreeBSD is in
the form of <em>man pages</em>. Nearly every program
on the system comes with a short reference manual
explaining the basic operation and various argument.
These manuals can be view with the
<tt><bf>man</bf></tt> command. Use of the
<tt><bf>man</bf></tt> command is simple:
<tscreen>
<bf>man</bf> <it>command</it>
</tscreen>
where <it>command</it> is the name of the command
you wish to learn about. For example, to learn more about
<tt><bf>ls</bf></tt> command type:
<tscreen>
% <bf>man ls</bf>
</tscreen>
<p>The online manual is divided up into numbered
sections:
<enum>
<item>User commands</item>
<item>System calls and error numbers</item>
<item>Functions in the C libraries</item>
<item>Device drivers</item>
<item>File formats</item>
<item>Games and other diversions</item>
<item>Miscellaneous information</item>
<item>System maintenance and operation commands</item>
</enum>
in some cases, the same topic may appear in more than
one section of the on-line manual. For example, there
is a <tt><bf>chmod</bf></tt> user command and a
<tt><bf>chmod()</bf></tt> system call. In this case,
you can tell the <tt><bf>man</bf></tt> command which
you want by specifying the section:
<tscreen>
% <bf>man 1 chmod</bf>
</tscreen>
which will display the manual page for the user command
<tt><bf>chmod</bf></tt>. References to a particular
section of the on-line manual are traditionally placed
in paranthesis in written documentation; so
<tt><bf>chmod(1)</bf></tt> refers to the <tt><bf>chmod
</bf></tt> user command, while <tt><bf>chmod(2)</bf></tt>
means the system call.
<p>This is fine if you know the name of the command and
forgot how to use it, but what if you cannot recall the
command name? You can use <tt><bf>man</bf></tt> to
search for keywords in the command <em>descriptions</em> by
using the <tt><bf>-k</bf></tt> switch:
<tscreen>
% <bf>man -k mail</bf>
</tscreen>
With this command you will be presented with a list of
commands that have the keyword `mail' in their
descriptions. This is the same as the separate command
<tt><bf>apropos</bf></tt>.
<p>You are seeing all those fancy commands in <tt>
/usr/bin</tt>, but don't even have the silliest idea
what most of the names do actually stand for? Simply
do a
<tscreen>
% <bf>cd /usr/bin; man -f *</bf>
</tscreen>
or
<tscreen>
% <bf>cd /usr/bin; whatis *</bf>
</tscreen>
which is the same.
<sect>
<heading>GNU Info files<label id="basics:info"></heading>
<p>FreeBSD includes many applications and utilities
produced by the Free Software Foundation (FSF). In
addition to man pages, these programs come with more
extensive hypertext documents called <em>info</em>
files which can be viewed with the <tt>info</tt>
command or, if you installed <tt>emacs</tt>, the info
mode of <tt>emacs</tt>.
To use the <tt>info(1)</tt> command, simply type:
<tscreen>% <bf>info</bf></tscreen> For a brief
introduction, type <tt><bf>h</bf></tt>, and for a quick
command reference, type <tt><bf>?</bf></tt>.
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