Get help about a Linux command

How to get help when working with a Linux command?

You can get help about a Linux command using various methods and tools. 

Using the --help option

- The most common way to get help is the --help option. it provides a brief description of the command and its available options

- you can typically use it like this by typing the command followed by --help and then press enter

- let us try it for example with the ls command

- so you see here that we get a short description about this command and for what it can do for you? and here with find the short and the long format of each option and  what change does this option bring to the default behavior of the ls command

The man command

- In linux, most commands come with manual pages that provide in-depth documentation on how to use the command. You can access a man page by typing man followed by the command that you want

- for example here, we can access the man page of the ls command by typing man ls

- and now we can navigate through the man page using arrow keys and to quit, just press the q key

The apropos command

- let us see now, how can the apropos command help you to solve the problems that you may encounter when you are working with the Command line interface in linux

- The apropos command is used to search for commands and their descriptions in the manual pages (man pages) based on keywords or phrases

- It's helpful when you're not sure about the exact command name but you have a general idea of what you want to do or what you're looking for. Here's how you can use apropos

- so just type apropos - a space - a keyword related the command that you are looking for

- for example here if we execute apropos followed by director

- apropos will search through the manual pages and return a list of commands and their descriptions that match the keyword "directories" This can help you discover relevant commands even if you don't know their names.

- Keep in mind that apropos searches the descriptions and not just the command names, so it can be quite useful for finding commands that serve a specific purpose or relate to a particular task.