Ubuntu: info > man

[Misanthropydotexe]

My fellow nooblings that have Ubuntu, I want to share with you something that was just shared with me.

I was informed, when I first got Ubuntu, that I could learn more about the terminal functions by typing "man" before the commands. Such as "man sudo". Unfortunately, this does not produce anything that is even slightly comprehensible, at least not to me.

A buddy of mine just found that you can do the same thing with "info" ("info sudo"). What comes out is written in English!

Just wanted to share. Have a wonderful day, fellow nooblings.

To the non-nooblings, any input? Is there another, even superior command? Is there information in "man" that is valuable that is missing from "info"?

[pretentious]

To the non-nooblings, any input? Is there another, even superior command?

google? lol I didn't actually know about info. I always figured the man page as kinda like a quick reference.
like I know what ping does but I might forget the arg name for number of pings sent(it's happened.) and man will refresh my memory.
I dont have my laptop with me but you could maybe try info info and assuming it gives a more verbose output might give you some leads.

[Misanthropydotexe]

When you get your hands on your laptop you should try it. I love the "info" command. I'm going to be using a lot of it to explore my terminal, when I get a little free time. It's great!

I did "info info," as well as "man info." They actually came out the same. But still super useful information. Googling only gave me a lot of "man" results. Maybe I haven't found just the right phrase to search for. "Man" certainly seems more popular.

[cyberdrain]

If I recall correctly 'info' was meant as a replacement of 'man' and in most cases when used by a program it will have more information than 'man' does. In cases where the program doesn't include a separate 'info' document, the one from 'man' is used. The only thing I hate about it, is that when used incorrectly it will display 'undocumented' features instead of outright telling you the 'man' or 'info' pages don't exist.

[Misanthropydotexe]

When used incorrectly? How can it be used incorrectly?
What undocumented features?
If they're undocumented, how can it display them?
Isn't showing special features that aren't documented a good thing?

[cyberdrain]

By incorrect use I mostly meant spelling mistakes. The program is used the normal way, that's true, but because it won't find any documentation, it will just display the same thing it does when the command is invoked without argument(s). I'd like to get a message showing I did something wrong instead of the program showing me (in this case) useless information.

I was wrong about the undocumented strings. I confused the page man shows when a program is installed, but doesn't have a manual page with it. It will display all commands that don't include normal documentation in the hopes that the displayed documentation will do something right. And yes, this is a good thing, unless the command isn't listed AND doesn't have documentation anywhere, in which case it's annoying. Neither the programmer nor the code is to blame in this case though.

[Misanthropydotexe]

Ah, gotcha. Thanks for the extra information.

[cyberdrain]

No problem.