man pages – they are searchable

man pages – they are searchable

I learned something the other day on undernet #freebsd which I think everyone should know.  You can search a man page.  WOW!

It appears that man accepts vi-like commands.  The search command is /texttosearchfor.   For example, if you are looking at man dump, and you want to find references to tape, you should type this:

/tape

This will take you to the next occurrence of the word tape.  To go to the next occurrence, just type:

/

And ? will take you to the previous occurrence.

Other commands I have found are:

:q – exit man