random-man

NAME
SYNOPSIS
OPTIONS
DESCRIPTION
AUTHOR
SEE ALSO
BUGS
COPYRIGHT

NAME

random-man − Show the man page of a random program

SYNOPSIS

random-man [-s] [-v] [paths...]

OPTIONS

−s

Show only the summary line of the command chosen.

−v

Show which programs for which manual pages didn’t exist.

paths

Optional - a list of paths to search (uses your PATH by default).

DESCRIPTION

This shell script chooses an executable program at random from the paths specified, or your PATH environment variable if not, and invokes man to enlighten the user as to its use. This can be very valuable for those new to UNIX/Linux administration (and those who aren’t so new) that want to educate themselves on utilities they may or may not have encountered before.

This utility sprung from the desire to learn more about the great utilities availble in Linux/UNIX and the lack of patience to do so in an organized manner. One very nice application of this utilitiy is to add it to your shell’s initialization file (with -s) to query the user as to their knowledge of a random utility he/she may not have known about.

AUTHOR

Rich Harkins (rich@worldsinfinite.com)

SEE ALSO

man

BUGS

Requires /bin/bash. I’m too lazy to make it work with plain /bin/sh.

COPYRIGHT

Copyright (c) 2004 Rich Harkins. GPL licencing applies (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/gpl.html).