>>>     I didn't say unix users have learned *all* tools via their manpages.
>>> I just said it's the case with many (or even most) tools.
>>
>> YOU didn't, no. But Jim seemed to be strongly hinting at it.
>
> No, I didn't say that, nor did I hint at that.  I was relating my own
> experience.

So saying "I learned everything I know about Unix just by reading the 
manpages" doesn't count as "strongly hinting that manpages are all you 
need"?

>> Just a few lines of example code could have helped me figure this out in
>> a few minutes instead of several hours. (And this must surely be a VFAQ
>> for shell scripting; it's just about the simplest task you could
>> possibly want to script!)
>
> for name [ [ in [ word ... ] ] ; ] do list ; done
>
> That's in the man page.

Uh... why does that need three nested levels of brackets?

Actually, suddenly I'm not sure I want to know the answer...

> To find a specific example, in my case, I'd grep through existing scripts
> on the system, starting with the init scripts.

Presumably to do that I'd have to already know how to run grep over 
every file in a directory. :-P (Not to mention knowing how to operate 
grep - it's highly non-trivial, after all - as well as how to determine 
which files are Bash scripts...)

-- 
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*

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