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From: lauther@janus.Berkeley.EDU (Ulrich Lauther)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.questions
Subject: Re: Online Unix Help?
Keywords: help help help
Message-ID: <36602@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU>
Date: 30 May 90 04:32:52 GMT
References: <6639@alvin.mcnc.org>
Sender: usenet@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU
Reply-To: lauther@janus.Berkeley.EDU.UUCP (Ulrich Lauther)
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Organization: University of California, Berkeley
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In article <6639@alvin.mcnc.org> omo@mcnc.org (Julie E. Omohundro) writes:
>
>We'd like to provide our users with online help with Unix.  We'd like
>it to be user friendly enough for novices, but comprehensive enough
>for experienced users, and to allow access to, not only the material
>in the users manual, but also other material that we've developed
>inhouse.
>
I have found the help-program distributed with the MKS-Software (Korn-Shell
and Unix-like commands for MSDOS) quite helpful, firstly because I have no
man-pages on my small 286-based Xenix system, secondly, because the output
is much more compact, but sufficient if you know what you are looking for,
but just cannot remember all the nitty-gritty options. I include as an
example the output of "help test":

[start citation]
test -- test for condition
Usage:	test expression
Conditional expression consists of:
-r file		file is readable	-w file		file is writable
-d file		file is a directory	-f file		file is a regular file
-x file	[U]	file is executable	-c file	[U]	character special file
-b file	[U]	block special file	-p file	[U]	named pipe (fifo) file
-u file	[U]	file is setuid		-g file	[U]	file is setgid
-k file		file is sticky/system	-s file		file size > 0
-t [fd]		fd (or 1) is terminal	-z string	string length is 0
-n string	string length > 0	str1 = str2	strings are identical
str1 != str2	strings are different	string		string is not empty
n1 -eq n2	integers are equal	n1 -ne n2	integers not equal
n1 -gt n2	integer n1 > n2		n1 -ge n2	integer n1 >= n2
n1 -lt n2	integer n1 < n2		n1 -le n2	integer n1 <= n2
file1 -nt file2	file1 newer than file2	-L file	[U]	file is symbolic link
file1 -ot file2	file1 older than file2
file1 -ef file2 [U]		files have the same device and i-node number
! expression			negation
expression -a expression	true if both expressions true
expression -o expression	true if at least one expression is true
( expression )			grouping expressions

Result is exit status of command.  [U] options are meaningful on UNIX only.
[end citation]

To use this under UNIX, I have written a simple shell script that extracts
the relevant information. (I assume, to use the MKS stuff this way on the
*same* machine I bought the MSDOS software for, does not violate the
licence agreement).
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Ulrich Lauther               Internet: lauther@janus.berkeley.edu
Siemens / UCB                ph: +1 415 642 3338 fax: 642 2739