Re: A Proposal: Each of Debian Man pages could have a wiki (Main page / Talk Page, etc.) at its bottom, with only Example Code Lines ...
On Thu 17 Jun 2021 at 18:01:55 (+0530), Susmita/Rajib wrote:
> On Thu, 17 Jun 2021 10:37:43 +0100, Jonathan Dowland
> > However, as with all things in Debian, things are best achieved by doing
> > them yourself; or at least, beginning to, so that there's a concrete
> > example to explore.
> >
> > In this case, there are at least two hurdles to overcome, neither of
> > which should be insurmountable:
> >
> > 1) The source ... upstream packages
> > themselves. Therefore, ... package maintainers will need to carry
> > patches for every man page...
> >
> > 2) The Debian Wiki has an unclear copyright ... Wiki content cannot be included...
> >
> > A good place to start would be finding a single package/program/manpage
> > that would benefit from linking out to a wiki page, and doing so, in
> > order to demonstrate the concept clearly.
> [...]
>
> So in brief, fully self-illustrative:
> https://lists.debian.org/debian-user/2021/03/msg01358.html
>
> In the end, the illustrative, but incomplete Mind Map:
> bit.ly/Apt_readingManPages
I looked back at that post, which I have already replied to
in general terms (msg01366.html); this reply is more specific
on just one point.
You used as an example a comparison between man ls
and several texts:
https://medium.com/@isaac_70614/the-ls-command-and-wildcard-7fff5a4f7f24
https://www.oreilly.com/library/view/learning-the-unix/1565923901/ch04s03.html
https://www.tecmint.com/use-wildcards-to-match-filenames-in-linux/
https://www.cyberciti.biz/faq/grep-regular-expressions/
Leaving aside the fourth¹ of these, you seem to have missed the point
that the texts are *teaching* wildcards, and the reason that all
three texts chose to use the ls command to illustrate the results is
that ls conveniently displays the matching filenames on the console.
The expansion of the wildcards is being done by the shell, not ls.
The shell would perform the same expansion for whatever command
were used, but most commands would operate on those files *without*
printing their names, which would not be very useful for teaching.
So comparing the texts with man ls is meaningless: the latter
deals with the options and exit codes provided by ls.
Where you should look for a meaningful comparison is man bash, and
in particular, the section EXPANSION, subsection Pathname Expansion,
subsubsection Pattern Matching. In making your comparison, bear in
mind that the texts are didactic, whereas man bash is only an
aide-memoire. For example, someone might use ls for years and not
remember how to sort the output by extension (-X), but you wouldn't
read through a book just for that. You'd consult the man page.
¹ The fourth text looks as though the reference just slipped in
accidentally from your next example. The patterns used by grep
are very different.
Cheers,
David.
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