Do some learning...

whatis $(compgen -c) 2>/dev/null | less

compgen -c finds everything in your path.

Sample Output

[ (1)                - check file types and compare values
2to3 (1)             - Python2 to Python3 converter
2to3-2.7 (1)         - Python2 to Python3 converter
411toppm (1)         - convert Sony Mavica .411 image to ppm
a2dismod (8)         - enable or disable an apache2 module
a2dissite (8)        - enable or disable an apache2 site / virtual host
a2enmod (8)          - enable or disable an apache2 module
a2ensite (8)         - enable or disable an apache2 site / virtual host
a2p (1)              - Awk to Perl translator
aa-audit (8)         - set a AppArmor security profile to audit mode.
aa-autodep (8)       - guess basic AppArmor profile requirements
...

By: bashrc

2013-02-01 00:03:33

whatis

4 Alternatives + Submit Alt

Do some learning...

no loop, only one call of grep, scrollable ("less is more", more or less...)
This is sample output - yours may be different.
12

ls /usr/bin | xargs whatis | grep -v nothing | less

michelsberg · 2010-01-26 12:59:47 32
Do some learning...
This is sample output - yours may be different.
7

for i in $(ls /usr/bin); do whatis $i | grep -v nothing; done | more

Abiden · 2010-01-26 06:15:54 7

Do some learning...

Just realized how needless the 'ls' has been... This version is also multilingual, since there is no need to grep for a special key word ("nothing"/"nichts"/"rien"/"nada"...). And it makes use of all the available horizontal space. Show Sample Output

whatis /usr/bin/* 2> /dev/null | less

michelsberg · 2013-01-31 22:25:30 8

Do some learning...

I like it sorted... 2> /dev/null was also needless, since our pipes already select stdin, only.
This is sample output - yours may be different.
2

whatis $(compgen -c) | sort | less

michelsberg · 2013-02-01 09:13:56 4

What Others Think

rahimhh21 · 87 weeks ago

Perfecthomepugs · 78 weeks ago

pugpuppies95 · 39 weeks and 6 days ago

What do you think?

Any thoughts on this command? Does it work on your machine? Can you do the same thing with only 14 characters?

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