GHelp Home Page

Description

By typing help on any unix platform, users will find themselves in a simple unix help utility which lists the most important commands. When given arguments, it will run them though man -k and then the man command.

Using

To get general help:
```
help
```
To get help on a topic or the actual man page:
```
help editor
```

Default help output

help commands:
    man -k keyword      - lists commands relevant to a keyword
    man command         - shows the manual pages for a command
more help commands:
    xman                - xwindow version of man
    tkman               - bigger xwindow manual page program
    info                - hypertext info system
    sccshelp            - views information on the Source Code Control System
    help                - this
    help command        - just another way of calling man
    help -k command     - just another way of calling man -k
general commands:
    cat                 - concatenates files (and just prints them out)
    mail                - sends and receives mail
    vi                  - text editor
    passwd              - changes login password
    exit                - exit this interface
    more                - view a file
    less                - view a file (back and forth)
file management commands:
    ls                  - lists contents of directory
    mv                  - moves file from one name to another
    rm                  - remove file or list of file
    ln -s               - create a symbolic link from a file to a new one
    ln                  - similar to ln -s but has some limitations
large things:
    netscape            - web browser (plus internet news and email)
    emacs               - extensible text editor
    pine                - program for internet news and email
    xbiff               - informs of new mail (requires xwindows)
useful system commands:
    top                 - shows processes taking up the top most CPU
    ps                  - shows processes
    kill                - kill processes
    tset                - sets terminal modes
users:
    finger              - user information lookup program
    who                 - who is on the system
    write               - writes to another user
running jobs:
    nice                - can be used to run a program with less priority
    renice              - same as nice but for an already running program
    nicer               - same as nice and renice but with lowest priority
e.g.
You could find programs about mail by the command:      man -k mail
and print out the man command documentation via:        man mail
You can log out by typing "exit".

Distribution

Free, under a GNU public licence

Download

The latest version can obtained here ghelp latest version

Platforms

All

Configuration

system admin configurable part

The content can of course be easily locally configured.
You might find that you have a program called help installed on your machine. This may be sccshelp or other programs. Deinstalling other programs of the same name is the best option (keeping "help" for real basic help) otherwise you can always install as ghelp.

Technical

It has a simple sanity checking on the PAGER environment variable and relevant help.

Latest

man page coming soon

Example

% help editor

gave

man -k editor gives the following - for full information use man command
ed (1)               - text editor
elvis (1)            - a clone of the ex/vi text editor
joe (1)              - Joe's Own Editor
pico (1)             - simple text editor in the style of the Pine Composer
red (1)              - text editor
sed (1)              - stream editor
vi (1)               - Vi IMproved, a programmers text editor
vim (1)              - Vi IMproved, a programmers text editor
zshzle (1)           - zsh command line editor
atobm (1x)           - bitmap editor and converter utilities for the X Window System
axe (1x)             - an X editor
bitmap (1x)          - bitmap editor and converter utilities for the X Window System
bmtoa (1x)           - bitmap editor and converter utilities for the X Window System
editres (1x)         - a dynamic resource editor for X Toolkit applications
No manual entry for editor

and then

% help vi

gives the man page

VIM(1)                                                     VIM(1)

NAME
       vim - Vi IMproved, a programmers text editor
...