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Thread: Find out what those commands are for!

  1. #1
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    Find out what those commands are for!

    Have you ever wanted to know what the commands in these directories do:
    /bin
    /sbin
    /usr/bin

    There is a command called whatis and xargs, that can be used quite creatively to print out quick definitions of all the command in a directory.
    Code:
    ls | xargs whatis | less
    Move to the bin directory of your choice and follow the example below:

    Code:
    root@0[/]# cd /bin
    root@0[bin]# ls | xargs whatis | less
    afio (1)             - manipulate archives and files
    arch (1)             - print machine architecture
    ash (1)              - a shell
    ash.static: nothing appropriate.
    bash (1)             - GNU Bourne-Again SHell
    bsd-csh (1)          - a shell (command interpreter) with C-like syntax
    bsh (1)              - a shell
    cat (1)              - concatenate files and print on the standard output
    chgrp (1)            - change group ownership
    
    etc... etc... etc...
    These will print out the whatis for every command in the directory you are in so you can get a quick overview of the commands listed.

    Enjoy!

  2. #2
    Junior Member registered user
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    THANK YOU!!

  3. #3
    Member registered user
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    No problem!
    This was a tip I learned a few years ago (I think) and it just popped back into my brain so I thought I would share it.

  4. #4
    Senior Member registered user
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    I like "dpkg -l |less"

    On a Debian system this will give you a list of all the packages you have installed on your machine with descriptions of what the package does.

    For example:

    ii 3270-common 3.2.17-2 Common files for IBM 3270 emulators {x,c,s,t
    ii a2ps 4.13b-20 GNU a2ps - 'Anything to PostScript' converte
    ii aalib-bin 1.4p5-17 sample programs using aalib
    ii aalib1 1.4p5-17 ascii art library
    ii abiword 1.9.0+cvs.2003 WYSIWYG word processor based on GTK2
    ii abiword-common 1.9.0+cvs.2003 WYSIWYG word processor based on GTK2
    ii ace-of-penguin 1.2-5 Solitaire-games with penguin-look
    ii acme 2.0.3-1 Enables the "multimedia buttons" found on la
    ii acroread 5.06-0.4 Adobe Acrobat Reader: Portable Document Form
    ii adduser 3.50 Add and remove users and groups

    The nice thing about this is that it also gives you the version of the package you have installed.

    If you want to look up just one package, you can do this "dpkg -l packagename"

    Ex. "dpkg -l cpio" yeilds

    cpio 2.5-1 GNU cpio -- a program to manage archives of files.

  5. #5
    Junior Member
    Join Date
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    Warsaw, Poland
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    polish translation of this article / polskie t?umaczenie

    polish translation of this article / polskie t?umaczenie tego artyku?u

    http://debiandiary.aso.strefa.pl/vie...asc&highlight=

  6. #6
    Junior Member
    Join Date
    Aug 2003
    Posts
    2
    xargs isn't necessary. You could do something like the following:

    Code:
    whatis `ls` |more
    The backticks around ls are expanded out to the output of the command. Therefore, if you had a directory consisting of two files, foo and bar, `ls` would expand out to "foo bar". The full command, after being fully expanded, in this case, would be:

    Code:
    whatis foo bar |more

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