Reading the man page for man(1)

To begin, you will need to be at a Unix command prompt. If you are using Unix or a suitable variant, simply log in or, if you're running an X session, drop back to text mode. Mac OS X users will find Terminal.app in Applications --> Utilities. Windows users, you have a few options: One, download and install PuTTY, obtain a free Unix shell account, and log in; or two, download and install Cygwin and double-click cygwin.bat to run bash.exe in a command-prompt window. If you can't be arsed to do either of those, skip this document entirely and read the damn thing online.



You are now ready to use the man command. man, short for "manual," is your link to the command documentation included with Unix and Unix-like operating systems, and will come in terribly handy as the learning curve for these OSes can be rather steep. Its use, therefore, is deceptively simple: man [command] will display an overview of the command's function, use, and configuration, run through a text formatter and pager for maximally convenient perusal. The documentation includes documentation of the man command itself, which is exactly what we are after: now that you've got your command-line prompt and your blinky cursor, type man man and press Enter, or Return, or whatever passes for a carriage return and/or line feed. And behold!



As you can see, the man page for man is rather long. To scroll down one line at a time, press the 'j' key; 'k' will scroll up (unless, of course, you have changed the default paging program that man uses either by passing a command-line option or editing the configuration file, in which case the navigation keys will differ; in which case, you have probably read this man page before and are not learning anything).

Ta-da! You have successfully read man man and are ready to move on to more adventures in Unix documentation. Try man ipfw if you enjoy being confused.