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List of terminal commands

From time to time new users ask where they can find a list of Terminal commands.

Clearly there are many possible replies to this but I like these four:

1 - Short list: http://ss64.com/osx/

2 - Long list: http://developer.apple.com/mac/library/documentation/Darwin/Reference/ManPages/

3 - Use the excellent 'List pages' facility of ManOpen. Each item is a clickable hot link.

4 - Produce your own list:

Open Terminal and paste the following and then type return:

/usr/libexec/makewhatis

Wait for the prompt.

Paste the following and then type return;

apropos ' '

On a basic Leopard installation this produces over 4,000 lines with each line containing one or more manual references. If you want to use the list it may be best to set the terminal to 999 columns before you start. It is easy to page down (shift page-down several times) to the bottom, select all (cmd A), copy (cmd C) and paste into a fast text editor (I still use BBEdit Light).

It is possible, although the mass edits are not trivial, to make each item in this list a hot link with one of the following:

A - HTML: <a href="x-man-page://ls">ls</a> - opens the manual page for ls in your Terminal - should work with most browsers - perhaps try clicking it!

B - Manual page - pity the hot links don't work in the Terminal although they do with several other applications such as ManOpen - see groff_mdoc for further information.

.Dd
.Dt LIST OFLINKS
.Os
.Bl -item -compact
.It
List of Links
.It
.Xr whatis 1
- search the whatis database for complete words
.It
.Xr man 1
- list directory contents
.It
.Xr ls 1
- format and display the on-line manual pages
.It
.Xr groff_mdoc 7
- reference for groff's mdoc implementation
.El

Do others have better ways to view local manual pages with full scroll and hot links?

Xserve and two 733 MHz G4s with Leopard !, Mac OS X (10.5.8)

Posted on Apr 3, 2010 4:33 PM

32 replies

Apr 12, 2010 4:58 PM in response to Neville Hillyer

I remembered the old version of CLIX that I used with Panther and Tiger.

I just downloaded this version and CAN NOT believe how they have changed it.

I thought you would benefit from seeing many Unix commands with a short description of what they do.

To install this version I just copied the CLIX folder to the Applications folder.

I then double-clicked the CLIX.app and then I clicked on "File", Open, and I navigated to CLIX-64,
Command Files, 10.6 Snow Leopard, system.clix. Opened system.clix.

Did NOT enter my password or passphrase anywhere.

I double clicked on Arch, single clicked on Run. Saw the output.

I single clicked in all the fields that have info and it let me type. If I wanted, I could have saved my changes.

You could add your own commands by going to Edit, Add.

You could add your own commands file by going to File, New. And then to Edit, Add. This way you could store and document the commands that you use.

Have you discovered http://rixstep.com/4/0/clix/ ?

I never have used ManOpen, so no help here.

Sorry.

Roberto

Message was edited by: Roberto Sepúlveda

Message was edited by: Roberto Sepúlveda

Apr 13, 2010 12:34 AM in response to Roberto Sepúlveda

Thanks.

I now see that Edit does as you say - pity I could not find this documented.

I am afraid I don't have the inclination to play with a poorly documented counterintuitive extra application which has no obvious way to help me.

However, thanks again for the link - it was an interesting hour playing with it - I will keep it on one OS for the time being.

List of terminal commands