Do some learning...

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

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.

Sample Output

acpi (1)             - zeigt den Batterieladestand und andere ACPI Informationen an
apropos (1)          - Suche in Handbuchseiten und deren Kurzbeschreibungen
apt-cache (8)        - den APT-Zwischenspeicher abfragen
apt-cdrom (8)        - APT-CD-ROM-Verwaltungswerkzeug
apt-config (8)       - APT-Konfigurationsabfrageprogramm
apt-extracttemplates (1) - Hilfsprogramm zum Extrahieren der debconf-Konfiguration und Schablonen von Debian-Paketen
apt-ftparchive (1)   - Hilfsprogramm zum Generieren von Indexdateien
apt-get (8)          - APT-Werkzeug f?r den Umgang mit Paketen - - Befehlszeilenschnittstelle
aptitude (8)         - Benutzerschnittstelle f?r den Paketmanager
aptitude-curses (8)  - Benutzerschnittstelle f?r den Paketmanager
apt-key (8)          - APT-Schl?sselverwaltungsdienstprogramm
apt-mark (8)         - ein Paket als automatisch installiert markieren oder diese Markierung entfernen
apt-sortpkgs (1)     - Werkzeug zum Sortieren von Paketindexdateien
cancel (1)           - Auftr?ge abbrechen
catman (8)           - erzeugt oder aktualisiert vorformatierte Handbuchseiten
chage (1)            - ?ndert die Information zum Passwortverfall
...

By: michelsberg

2013-01-31 22:25:30

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 39

Do some learning...

compgen -c finds everything in your path. Show Sample Output

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

bashrc · 2013-02-01 00:03:33 5

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 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 5

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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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