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Re: Documentation of "history" command



On 2018-05-11 at 07:50, Richard Owlett wrote:

> When I search man-pages.debian.org I get only a page in Chinese(?).
> The best hit I get doing a web search is
>   [http://www.tldp.org/LDP/GNU-Linux-Tools-Summary/html/x1712.htm]
> There is a plethora questions/answers, but too narrowly focused.
> They do display it's potential power.
> 
> Suggestions?

To possibly expand on and/or clarify what others have said:

Some commands aren't separate programs (which get man pages), but shell
built-in commands (which are documented in the shell's own man page).

The easiest way to tell which one a given program is is via the 'type'
command (which itself is a shell builtin):

$ type history
history is a shell builtin
$ type man
man is hashed (/usr/bin/man)

Once you've determined that a particular command is a shell builtin, you
can either look it up in the man page of whatever shell you're running,
or - at least with bash in a standard installation, and probably in
other shells as well - look it up directly with the 'help' command:

$ help history
[output snipped, its over two dozen lines long]

However, that documentation is purely functional; it doesn't delve into
the possible ramifications of ways to use the command in various
contexts, so it might fall under the same "too narrowly focused" as the
Q&A you report having found online.

-- 
   The Wanderer

The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one
persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all
progress depends on the unreasonable man.         -- George Bernard Shaw

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