Specifications

Chapter 1 Executing Commands 29
Viewing Command Information
Most command-line documentation comes in the form of man pages. These formatted
pages provide reference information for shell commands, tools, and high-level
concepts.
You can also access command information using the help command, and sometimes
information is displayed if you enter the command without parameters or options.
To access a man page:
$ man command
where command is the topic you want to find information about. The man page contains
detailed information about the command, its options, parameters, and proper use.
For help using the man command, enter:
$ man man
If man pages are too long to fit on your screen, use the more or less command to
paginate the file. This allows you to view the file faster by loading screens of the man
page at a time, rather than the entire file:
$ man serveradmin | less
When you use more or less, an information bar appears at the bottom of the screen.
When you see the bar, you can press the Space bar to go to the next page, the B key to
go back a page, or the Return key to scroll the file forward one line at a time.
When you get to the end of a file, more returns you to the prompt and less waits for
you to press the Q key to quit.
Several third-party Mac OS X applications are available for viewing formatted man
pages in scrollable windows. You can find one by choosing Mac OS X Software from the
Apple menu and then searching for “man page.”
Note: Not all commands and tools have man pages. For a list of available man pages,
look in /usr/share/man.