Re: umask has no man page?

[berenger.morel@neutralite.org]

Le 03.11.2014 04:30, Joe Pfeiffer a écrit :
> Carl Fink <carl@finknetwork.com> writes:
>
> > When I wanted the options for umask, I typed 'man umask' and got the 
> > man
> > page for it as a C header diretive? (I'm not a C programmer, but it 
> > seemed
> > to be for C header files and came from section 2.)
> >
> > This is darn confusing for a new user. I have been around long 
> > enough
> > (slink) that I quickly realized it must be a Bash builtin and found 
> > that man
> > page, but how would a beginner know that? Surely a symbolic link 
> > could be
> > set up for umask as well as the others (bg, eval, fg, read, etc.)?
> >
> > Should I file this as a bug against Sid? I know there's no chance it 
> > will
> > make it into Wheezy.
>
> The underlying problem is that umask isn't a standalone command, it's 
> a
> shell builtin.  So if you look at the bash manpage you can find the
> (very terse) documention; of course, there's no hint anywhere that 
> you
> should do that.  Just as for (looking at some other builtins) ulimit,
> unalias, unset....

I already fell into that kind of problems. It is quite frustrating when 
you are trying to learn, to have to go on Internet to do a whatever 
search on "man <something>".
On this present topic, I have learn various commands (which is good) 
and I am wondering if, finally, help, man and info should not be 
considered as "low level" functions.
I do not think the beginner expects to have to run something like this:
$ cmd=man;apropos $cmd 2>/dev/null && man $cmd || help $cmd

Plus, this won't work as nicely as it might be expected, since "help 
$cmd" won't be very informative.

Of course, one could use "info $(basename $SHELL)" instead, but then he 
would have to search for the exact part of the info manual, which is 
(imho):
_ not trivial (ok, it is probably because I do not know how emacs 
works, I guess info is more emacs-like, when less is closer to vi, with 
which I am more familiar)
_ inefficient: seriously, why does not it uses the complete width of 
the termninal? I *have* to print 3 info pages side-by-side to use my 
screen efficiently when I read documentation. Plus, if for some reason, 
I have to have a smaller terminal window, then it become simply 
unreadable! And those points are not only true in a terminal-emulator.