I’ve got to confess, I have for years been guilty if not reading the documentation. I simply go with the flow and hope it works…
But not anymore! And why the change you may ask? We’ll, I’m reading the f…ing documentation on Rocky linux and I’m just blown away from the amount of great information!
If you’ve been guilty of not reading the documentation, let me me know what changed it for you
If you’re not reading the documentation, this is your time to confess!
Oh thank hell it’s not just me. Every so often I retry the man command only to get frustrated having to flip through six walls of text via keyboard for something a 20 second Internet search would have easily refreshed my memory on.
Oh it is certainly not just you, I am sometimes confused reading them even for commands I have used for years and I know what flag I am looking for but don’t remember the exact syntax or something hah! I am glad they are there but they are definitely not a complete guide to any command, especially built-ins.
Interestingly, this is something AI has been very useful for to me, less searching because I can describe the outcome I want and it figures out what I am talking about generally.
Bingo.
And even then it’s difficult to find shit, like for instance, finding the working directory for
crontabwhen run as root. This answer on Stack Exchange is the embodiment of my second example in the other comment. The answers go into great detail, yet still don’t answer the question in any reasonable capacity for a “standard user” like myself.