I'm tyring to learn the command line, and want to read some man pages while I'm on a pc at work.
But I'm not sure which man page versions I should be reading.
At ss64.com, for example, there are bash pages and osx/tsch pages, but 10.4 has bash as the default shell now.
So if I read the bash pages will I be missing the osx specific stuff in the tsch pages?
Are the differences significant enough that it matters?
Is there a good, up to date, set of man pages for osx/bash?
thanks
Raven
09-21-2005, 11:45 AM
Take a look at the list of resources on this (http://developer.apple.com/documentation/MacOSX/index.html) page. One of them is an html document with the Man documentation specific to OS X.
Or you can go for the direct link to the Man reference page here (http://developer.apple.com/documentation/Darwin/Reference/ManPages/index.html)
hayne
09-21-2005, 12:43 PM
I'm tyring to learn the command line, and want to read some man pages while I'm on a pc at work.
Raven has pointed you to the authoritative source for OS X man pages.
But I'd like to point out that it will be very hard to "learn the command line" without having a command-prompt available to try things out. I.e. while reading the man pages will gain you a bit, you really need to learn by doing. The man pages are not intended as a learning resource - they are intended as a reference. You would typically use them immediately before typing in a command.
For learning Bash and OS X in general, you would be better off with one (or more) of the many tutorials available. See the last section of this
Unix FAQ (http://forums.macosxhints.com/showthread.php?t=40648) for pointers.
And I don't think there is anything OS X specific in either tcsh or bash.
Thanks Raven and hayne. I'll just use the apple man pages.
I realize that the man pages are more reference than guide, but I am acutally using them as references here, to get a sense of what the various commands and options are, and to try to figure out which commands to combine given what I'm trying to do.
Seems like man pages are one of the main obstacles to learing unix, and I'm trying to confront that head on (although I am of course using other materials as well).
hayne - by osx specific I was thinking of some of the -0 flags for filenames with spaces, commands that do or don't preserve resource forks, and osx specific commands, like mdfind. So it was more about the commands than the shells. Does that make sense?
hayne
09-21-2005, 04:14 PM
hayne - by osx specific I was thinking of some of the -0 flags for filenames with spaces, commands that do or don't preserve resource forks, and osx specific commands, like mdfind. So it was more about the commands than the shells. Does that make sense?
Yes - except that you were asking about the bash & tcsh man pages. The commands are independent of the shells. The shells are just the user-interface for launching the commands.
giskard22
09-21-2005, 06:36 PM
I've found the hmug.org site easier to navigate than Apple's.