Even though bash -n is a valid and widely used option, some manpages don't clearly document it in the bash options section, even though it is implemented. It's also not in the GNU Bash Reference Manual – Invoking Bash section: https://www.gnu.org/software/bash/manual/html_node/Invoking-Bash.html I can understand that the Bash man page (man bash) doesn't explicitly list -n as a command-line option for Bash itself but I would expect info bash to include it since I was under the impression that info documents are much more comprehensive than linux manpages. This omission is confusing and frustrating. The only place it's mentioned is in a stackoverflow answer: https://stackoverflow.com/a/171932

As per my knowledge/understanding both help and man came at the same time or have very little time difference between them. Then GNU Info came in and from what I have seen is much more verbose, much more detailed and arguably much better than what man is. Many entries even today in man are cryptic. I have often wondered why Info which is superior to man in many ways didn't succeed man at all. I still see people producing man pages than info pages. Was it due to not helpful tools for info? Something in the licenses of the two? Or some other factor which didn't get info the success it richly deserved? I did see a few questions on unix stackexchange notably https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/77514/what-is-gnu-info-for and https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/19451/difference-between-help-info-and-man-command/159817 among others.

On GNU/Linux is it possible to change the default pager for info command? I would like to use less as the pager (similar to man pages). I have customized less to use colors to make navigation of man pages much easier.

man tree1 states: > -info Prints file comments found in .info files. See .INFO FILES below for more information on the format of .info files. and further >**.INFO FILES** > >.info files are similiar to .gitignore files, if a .info file is found while scanning a directory it is read and added to a stack of .info information. Each file is composed of comments (lines starting with hash marks (#),) or wild-card patterns which may match a file relative to the directory the .info file is found in. If a file should match a pattern, the tab indented comment that follows the pattern is used as the file comment. A comment is terminated by a non-tab indented line. Multiple patterns, each to a line, may share the same comment. # Objective Given the following directory structure: tree . ├── fileA.txt ├── fileB.txt └── other_files └── fileC.txt I would like to create a an info file(s) that would enable me to get the following output . ├── fileA.txt # Comments on file A read from info file ├── fileB.txt # Comments on file B read from info file └── other_files └── fileC.txt Following the man pages this should be possible but I can't find an example how such an info file should be created. I've identified [one potentially relevant discussion](https://unix.stackexchange.com/q/164443/159721)2 but it's not clear to me what should be the structure of this .info file so tree can use it to populate outputs with additional comments. --- 1Version: tree v2.0.2 (c) 1996 - 2022 by Steve Baker, Thomas Moore, Francesc Rocher, Florian Sesser, Kyosuke Tokoro* 2 As discussed in the comments, the link is not pertinent to this question.

Often times I will ssh into a new client's box to make changes to their website configuration without knowing much about the server configuration. I have seen a few ways to get information about the system you're using, but are there some standard commands to tell me what version of Unix/Linux I'm on and basic system information (like if it is a 64-bit system or not), and that sort of thing? Basically, if you just logged into a box and didn't know anything about it, what things would you check out and what commands would you use to do it?

How can I add line numbers to man pages or info pages in Linux? I want to use line numbers to navigate in man pages. I can write the man page in a file and then open it with Vim, but is there a better way?

so I have this handy little function: zhelp() { man zshall | less -p "^ $1" } ... but it's time I moved to 'info' and I trust there's a simple option to search for some ... not just a string ... but a ... sorry, I don't know the jargon ... but an 'entry' or 'heading' or 'item'. As above, in 'man' these always have seven spaces after the beginning of a line then the name of the 'item'. I looked at 'info info' but you hafta already know the jargon to make any sense of it. I'll bet this is easy if you already know the answer.

info foo

Next, I am in a foo page with links navigated by enter and arrow keys. Are there vim keymap settings for this?

info make opened same as man make. I've downloaded make.info.tar.gz file from https://www.gnu.org/software/make/manual/ , then: sudo cp ~/Downloads/make.info.tar.gz /usr/share/info/ sudo install-info /usr/share/info/make.info.tar.gz /usr/share/info/dir I got info (no pun intended) from https://www.gnu.org/software/texinfo/manual/texinfo/texinfo.html#Installing-an-Info-File Now there is a new entry when I do info: > * Make: (make). Remake files automatically. But when I select it I get Cannot find node ''. info make still displays man page, not Info document page. What could be the problem?

I understand what GNU Info is and how to use it, but what is it *for*? Why does it exist in parallel to the man pages? Why not write detailed man pages rather than provide a separate utility?

I'm currently looking through the "info" page for "ls" command and I want to find all relevant sections that contain the keyword "-l". But I'm not sure how to search for keywords and how to move between different instance of same keyword.

I have installed the glibc-doc-reference package in Debian Bullseye, and the package documentation says that it Contains The GNU C Library Reference manual in info, pdf and html format. The HTML format is easy enough to open, and the PDF file is possible to extract from the compressed file. But I would like to try to read the info format in the terminal. I thought it could be possible to read these from the info reader, but how? What is the recommended way of opening these files? They are 14 gz-files stored as e.g. /usr/share/info/libc.info.gz and I have no clue what to do with them, but I want to learn. Should I extract them to my home directory, one by one?

I am working on the installation for Maxima, a computer algebra system. The reference manual is written as a collection of Texinfo files. The primary documentation is English, but there are several translations (German, Spanish, etc.). .info files are then generated by makeinfo. What is the general agreement (explicit or implicit) about where to put .info files for various languages? I am interested in Debian guidelines or conventions since, to my understanding, they are somewhat more constraining than other packaging systems, so, they might have a clearer guideline, and also Debian is likely to be a bottleneck for an installation which is supposed to work on various systems. I am hoping to make the installation of English and other languages symmetric in the sense that English goes into an en subdirectory just as German, Spanish, etc., go into de, es, etc. subdirectories. Does it make sense to just put the files into /usr/share/info/nn where nn is a language subdirectory? (Would the info reader be able to find .info files in such subdirectories?) I wasn't able to locate any relevant hints by a web search, and perusing the .info files on my Linux system doesn't turn up any apparently non-English files, so I don't have an example of how another project is doing it.

I was looking for a way to follow "hyperlinks" in man pages, when I stumbled across the info command, which seemed to display information on commands the same as man but also allows you to tab to hyperlinks (and sadly no vim keybindings, but the arrow keys work) But it made me wonder if this command was just displaying man pages with different formatting and functionality of display...or if it was displaying something else entirely like a separate set of documentation.

If I use man to view man pages, they are not interactive at all, I can merely change the visuals through a pager. With info I can view man and info pages with interactive links, including the links in "See Also" in man pages. But info strips all highlighting for man-pages and does not recognize other kinds of links, such as https links or file paths. I know that there are web and GUI alternatives, but isn't there some command-line tool that provides a smoother experience and can ideally handle both formats in one?

I have a problem with some commands in info. 1. I found that C-x means not C but Ctrl. 2. In addition I have a problem with "M-x" (this is probably not "M" key (shift+m), and RET is the Enter key?? 3. There is also "LFD (select-reference-this-line)" and I have no idea which key is that.

How can we know kernel version on Debian and Arch offline ? i.e from other running Linux installed on another partition

I would like to dump the text from a page of a tool's info documentation to a text file and read and edit it subsequently in Vim. Does the GNU info reader permit dumping of its text, or is there an easy way to find the directory of its source text and render it (in case of markup tags)?

While redirecting info bash > file.info on Ubuntu, I get a file.info file with just the error: info: No menu item 'bash' in node '(dir)Top' I tried to look at the location of the info page by using info bash -w which shows *manpages* I also could not find bash info page under /usr/share/info but I did find it under /usr/share/man/man1. However, I tried info find > file.info (find command had an info page under /usr/share/info) which was successful. Also info bash works fine. My system - Ubuntu 20.04.2 LTS with the kernel 5.11.0-25-generic Kindly help.

Using H within info there are a series of options like 'C-n' ('next-line') (an arrow key) Move the cursor down to the next line. 'C-p' ('prev-line') (an arrow key) Move the cursor up to the previous line. But I am not sure how to invoke them with keystrokes. I tried Shift+C then the next character (i.e Shift+C+p) but that did not work. Also tried C followed quickly by p . . . Basic question - but have not yet found much direction.