Useful Manpages

2017-11-11
linux, git

A while ago I discovered that there is a manpage for the ASCII character set. It got a bunch of upvotes, and since then I wondered what other manpages were worth knowing about. Below is a small table of manpages that I found interesting.

Manpage Description
ascii(7) the ASCII character set (in octal, decimal, and hex)
units(7) megabytes vs mebibytes, etc.
hier(7) traditional filesystem hierarchy (e.g., /bin vs /usr/bin)
file-hierarchy(7) (systemd) filesystem hierarchy
operator(7) C operator precedence rules (listed in descending order)
console_codes(4) Linux console escape and control sequences
terminal-colors.d(5) among other things, ANSI color sequences
boot(7) UNIX System V Release 4 bootup process
daemon(7) (systemd) how to write/package daemons
proc(5) proc filesystem (/proc)
ip(7) Linux IPv4 protocol implementation (a bit low-level, but still useful)
ipv6(7) Linux IPv6 protocol implementation
socket(7) Linux socket interface
unix(7) UNIX domain sockets
fifo(7) named pipes

Note that you need to run

sudo mandb

to be able to invoke apropos <SEARCH_TERM> or man -k <SEARCH_TERM> (man -k is equivalent to apropos — see man(1)).

Git-specific

You probably knew already that Git has many manpages dedicated to each of its subcommands, such as git-clone(1) or git-commit(1), but did you know that it also comes with a suite of tutorials? Behold!

Manpage Description
giteveryday(7) the top ~20 useful git commands you should know
gitglossary(7) a glossary of all git concepts (blob object, working tree, etc.)
gittutorial(7) a high-level view of using git
gittutorial-2(7) explains the object database and index file (git architecture internals)
gitcore-tutorial(7) like gittutorial-2(7), but much more detailed
gitworkflows(7) recommended workflows, esp. branching strategies for maintainers

Happy hacking!