Commands using whatis (8)

  • no loop, only one call of grep, scrollable ("less is more", more or less...)


    12
    ls /usr/bin | xargs whatis | grep -v nothing | less
    michelsberg · 2010-01-26 12:59:47 39
  • compgen -c finds everything in your path. Show Sample Output


    8
    whatis $(compgen -c) 2>/dev/null | less
    bashrc · 2013-02-01 00:03:33 5

  • 7
    for i in $(ls /usr/bin); do whatis $i | grep -v nothing; done | more
    Abiden · 2010-01-26 06:15:54 8
  • The whatis command displays a short description for the command you list on the command line. It is useful to quickly learn what a command does Show Sample Output


    5
    whatis [command-name]
    haivu · 2009-04-02 17:30:13 15
  • Get simple description on each file from /bin dir, in list form, usefull for newbies. Show Sample Output


    4
    ls -1 /bin | xargs -l1 whatis 2>/dev/null | grep -v "nothing appropriate"
    stinger · 2009-02-17 14:46:01 7
  • 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


    3
    whatis /usr/bin/* 2> /dev/null | less
    michelsberg · 2013-01-31 22:25:30 9
  • I like it sorted... 2> /dev/null was also needless, since our pipes already select stdin, only.


    2
    whatis $(compgen -c) | sort | less
    michelsberg · 2013-02-01 09:13:56 5
  • Many times I give the same commands in loop to find informations about a file. I use this as an alias to summarize that informations in a single command. Now with variables! :D Show Sample Output


    2
    fileinfo() { RPMQF=$(rpm -qf $1); RPMQL=$(rpm -ql $RPMQF);echo "man page:";whatis $(basename $1); echo "Services:"; echo -e "$RPMQL\n"|grep -P "\.service";echo "Config files:";rpm -qc $RPMQF;echo "Provided by:" $RPMQF; }
    nnsense · 2015-05-11 16:46:01 13

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