{"id":10893,"date":"2025-09-09T09:42:37","date_gmt":"2025-09-09T08:42:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ri.itservices.manchester.ac.uk\/csf3\/?page_id=10893"},"modified":"2025-09-10T10:56:08","modified_gmt":"2025-09-10T09:56:08","slug":"accessing-documentation","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/ri.itservices.manchester.ac.uk\/csf3\/getting-started\/accessing-documentation\/","title":{"rendered":"Accessing Documentation"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>It is not possible, nor is it profitable, for this documentation to contain a complete description of every package available at this site. These packages have their own documentation (that is more complete) and the purpose of the following is to explain how it is accessed. This documentation is described as <em>online<\/em> in the sense that it is found on the system, as opposed to a hard copy.<\/p>\n<p>The canonical form of documentation in <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Unix\">Unix<\/a> and <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Unix-like\">Unix-like<\/a> operating systems is the <em>man page<\/em> (<em>man<\/em> being a truncation of <em>manual<\/em>). These pages are a single document and they are grouped into <em>sections<\/em> based on their contents (e.g. user commands, file formats, etc.). A page is identified in text by its name, usually in boldface, followed by its section in parentheses. Pages are accessed using the command <strong>man<\/strong>(1).<\/p>\n<pre>$ man\r\nWhat manual page do you want?\r\nFor example, try 'man man'.<\/pre>\n<p>The commands <strong>apropos<\/strong>(1) and <strong>whatis<\/strong>(1) will search the document for pages related to a given term. The former is broader (across names and descriptions), the latter is narrower (across names only).<\/p>\n<pre>$ apropos man\r\n...\r\n$ whatis man\r\n...<\/pre>\n<p>Pages exist for <strong>apropos<\/strong>(1), <strong>man<\/strong>(1), and <strong>whatis<\/strong>(1) and details on common formatting conventions are found on the page <strong>man-pages<\/strong>(7).<\/p>\n<pre>$ man 7 man-pages<\/pre>\n<p>While there are many pages, there is not a guarantee one will exist.<\/p>\n<pre>$ man foo\r\nNo manual entry for foo<\/pre>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>It is not possible, nor is it profitable, for this documentation to contain a complete description of every package available at this site. These packages have their own documentation (that is more complete) and the purpose of the following is to explain how it is accessed. This documentation is described as online in the sense that it is found on the system, as opposed to a hard copy. The canonical form of documentation in Unix.. <a href=\"https:\/\/ri.itservices.manchester.ac.uk\/csf3\/getting-started\/accessing-documentation\/\">Read more &raquo;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":22,"featured_media":0,"parent":12,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-10893","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ri.itservices.manchester.ac.uk\/csf3\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/10893","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ri.itservices.manchester.ac.uk\/csf3\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ri.itservices.manchester.ac.uk\/csf3\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ri.itservices.manchester.ac.uk\/csf3\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/22"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ri.itservices.manchester.ac.uk\/csf3\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10893"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/ri.itservices.manchester.ac.uk\/csf3\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/10893\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10936,"href":"https:\/\/ri.itservices.manchester.ac.uk\/csf3\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/10893\/revisions\/10936"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ri.itservices.manchester.ac.uk\/csf3\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/12"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ri.itservices.manchester.ac.uk\/csf3\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10893"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}