Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!rutgers!gatech!hubcap
From: hubcap@hubcap.UUCP (Mike Marshall)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.questions
Subject: Re: Online Guru ..
Message-ID: <841@hubcap.UUCP>
Date: 10 Jan 88 21:54:00 GMT
References: <2665@shamash.UUCP> <586@mcrware.UUCP>
Organization: Clemson University, Clemson, SC
Lines: 22

* > I'm curious if there exists (running
* > on any system, ... a sort_of, "Online Guru".. 
* > Software that you could literally ask, "How to I do disk backups", to
* > which the response would be, "Dump is the UNIX utility that [...].
* > Please see the manual page for dump(8) for further [...]."

have you tried "man -k KEYWORD" ?

If you think I am being patronizing, press "n" now.

If not, here's how it works: pick a KEYWORD that relates to what you want
to learn about, and all of the title lines from the man pages will be
searched and the ones with KEYWORD in 'em will be listed. You might have to
try several times to find what you want, but it usually works for me.

For example:    man -k backup         won't get you what you want...
                      but
                man -k file           will do it.

Also, We BSD types can say  "apropos" instead of "man -k"... classy!
            
-Mike Marshall         hubcap@hubcap.clemson.edu          ...!hubcap!hubcap