Man Pages
A man page (short for manual page) documents or describes topics applicable to Linux programming. These topics include Linux programs, certain programming functions, standards, and conventions, and abstract concepts.
To get the man page for a Linux command, you can type:
man <command name>
For example:
man ls
This command displays a man page that gives information on the ls command, including a description, flags, instructions on use, and other information.
Each man page has a description. The -k flag for man allows you to search these descriptions using a keyword. For example:
man -k printf
This searches all the descriptions for the keyword printf and prints the names of the man pages with matches.
Learning how to ready man pages is an important skill.
Exercises
By default, the ls command does not include files with names that shart with a dot (.). The lab1 directory contains a file that starts with a dot. Use man to identify the flag to use with ls to include this file when listing the contents of lab1.