[Linux] help & man - print command information

This post is written by YoungJ-Baek

1. Preface

There are tons of commands in Shell prompt. We can google them if it is needed. However, Linux itself provide help command for users. Also, man command provides more detailed version.

2. help

--help command gives brief information of the command. It prints brief information at the current terminal.

Command

$ [command] --help

Example

$ mkdir --help

MacOS does not support --help command. Instead, you can use man command for more information.

3. man

Unlike --help command, man opens its page that contains much more information compared to others.

Command

$ man [command]

Example

$ man mkdir

Usually, information provided by man is more than one page. So, it would be better to know some shortcut for easier usage.

Shortcut	Description	Remark
page up or b	move to the previous page
page down or space bar	move to the next page
/[keyword]	search the keyword in the manual
q	quit