StarManta said:
It's THOROUGHLY document, but I don't know if I'd call it "well" documented
man is one of the worst text-reading interfaces i've ever used, especially since
1) there doesn't seem to be any way to jump to the end
2) i ALWAYS want to go to the end first, where the examples are
3) if you hold the down arrow, it scrolls down, but then if you dont let it up at JUST the right time, man exits and you have to start all over again.
*growls @ man*
You should be able to page through using the spacebar, works like that on other nixes anyhow.
Most man pages are also now available as HTML versions and there are plenty of Linux help sites on the web.
For compatibility with PCs gzip is probably best although for personal use I prefer lzop.
The first port of call for any unix utilities is to try the command first with a -h or even --help switch, that will at least give the available switches and expected parameters.
for example (and this is built in on OSX):
gzip -h
gzip 1.2.4 (18 Aug 93)
usage: gzip [-cdfhlLnNrtvV19] [-S suffix] [file ...]
-c --stdout write on standard output, keep original files unchanged
-d --decompress decompress
-f --force force overwrite of output file and compress links
-h --help give this help
-l --list list compressed file contents
-L --license display software license
-n --no-name do not save or restore the original name and time stamp
-N --name save or restore the original name and time stamp
-q --quiet suppress all warnings
-r --recursive operate recursively on directories
-S .suf --suffix .suf use suffix .suf on compressed files
-t --test test compressed file integrity
-v --verbose verbose mode
-V --version display version number
-1 --fast compress faster
-9 --best compress better
file... files to (de)compress. If none given, use standard input.
Amen-Moses
