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jrmgtoday at 2:43 PM6 repliesview on HN

Does anyone here actually use the GNU info documentation?


Replies

mooktoday at 5:40 PM

I use it in particular for bash, mostly because it has better expositions for parameter expansions. To the point that I know searching for "%%" in particular will get me to the correct section.

For everything else… I think it's also necessary for GNU find expressions?

SoftTalkertoday at 5:20 PM

No. I have no idea how it works, it's like being a new user in vi and not knowing how to quit.

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teddyhtoday at 4:35 PM

I use it all the time, preferring it to everything else¹. Especially when reading the Python documentation.

1. <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44213303>

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advisedwangtoday at 5:32 PM

I use the online versions, e.g. https://www.gnu.org/software/make/manual/html_node/index.htm.... In this form they are pretty good documentation (although that is usually due to being comprehensive and adequately written, nothing really to do with info beyond supporting adequate structure).

ho_schitoday at 4:04 PM

No. Every man page is better, concise, easy to access.

GNU Info should be like a browser but it makes something simple into something complicated.

kevin_thibedeautoday at 3:20 PM

I occasionally use gnu info. My favorite tool is pinfo which has a man mode that adds navigable links to cross references in man pages and can shell out to hyperlinks. I usually have that aliased as man.

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