You reminded me that a few days ago I listed the files in a core package on a server (looking for a missing utility) and saw a few things in the list that I didn't immediately recognise. I thought at the time, "That would be a good way to learn about utilities that I don't know exist".
The downside is that it's system-dependant, and you have to know or guess the names of the important packages. On my system, anything called "*utils" is likely to be worth looking into. #~ pacman -Q | grep "utils" binutils 2.32-2 bluez-utils 5.50-6 bridge-utils 1.6-3 ca-certificates-utils 20181109-1 cifs-utils 6.8-2 coreutils 8.31-1 desktop-file-utils 0.23+4+g92af410-1 diffutils 3.7-1 exfat-utils 1.3.0-1 findutils 4.6.0-4 inetutils 1.9.4-7 iputils 20180629.f6aac8d-4 jfsutils 1.1.15-6 keyutils 1.6-1 pciutils 3.6.2-1 pcmciautils 018-8 python-docutils 0.14-2 sg3_utils 1.44-1 sysfsutils 2.1.0-10 usbutils 010-1 v4l-utils 1.16.6-1 xdg-utils 1.1.3-3 xorg-font-utils 7.6-5 xorg-xkbutils 1.0.4-3 #~ pacman -Ql binutils | grep /bin/ binutils /usr/bin/ binutils /usr/bin/addr2line binutils /usr/bin/ar binutils /usr/bin/as binutils /usr/bin/c++filt binutils /usr/bin/dwp binutils /usr/bin/elfedit binutils /usr/bin/gprof binutils /usr/bin/ld binutils /usr/bin/ld.bfd binutils /usr/bin/ld.gold binutils /usr/bin/nm binutils /usr/bin/objcopy binutils /usr/bin/objdump binutils /usr/bin/ranlib binutils /usr/bin/readelf binutils /usr/bin/size binutils /usr/bin/strings binutils /usr/bin/strip On Fri, 5 Jul 2019 at 12:14, Patrick Wigmore <d...@wigm.uk> wrote: > On Thu, 04 Jul 2019 10:37:35 +0100, Bob Dunlop wrote: > > nvi > > text data bss dec hex filename > > 27061 2048 256 29365 72b5 /usr/bin/nvi > > 442019 18688 144 460851 70833 /usr/lib64/libvi.so.0 > > 430302 17628 2552 450482 6dfb2 /lib64/libncursesw.so.6 > > This type of output was not something I was familiar with. I can see > that size(1) produces output in this format, given a list of object > files, but what method did you use to produce the list of files, > excluding common operating system libraries? > > More generally, this highlighted to me a gap in my knowledge about how > to discover utilities that fill a particular need without first > knowing their names. I had already forgotten the route I took to > discovering size(1) within minutes of discovering it. It began with a > web search for the column headings in the output and ended with some > poking around on the local system. > > I discovered ldd(1) in a similarly poorly remembered fashion, but it's > clearly not the whole solution. > > I was inspired to read man(1)'s manual page and to belatedly try out > man -k and man -K. However, it is difficult to devise keywords that > are specific enough to select the right manual pages and generic > enough to appear in their short descriptions. > > For example, the short description of size(1) does not make any > mention of object files: > > $ man -f size > size (1) - list section sizes and total size. > > Even if it did mention object files, that would need to be the > terminology that came to mind if I wanted to find size(1) using: > > $ apropos -a object size > > (It seems to me that man -k has no direct equivalent to the -a option > of apropos.) > > So, I still feel in want of a good categorised summary of well-known > commands, or at least a search technique that can expand my search to > include conceptually-related terms. > > Patrick > > -- > Next meeting: BEC, Bournemouth, Tuesday, 2019-08-06 20:00 > Check to whom you are replying > Meetings, mailing list, IRC, ... http://dorset.lug.org.uk/ > New thread, don't hijack: mailto:dorset@mailman.lug.org.uk > -- Next meeting: BEC, Bournemouth, Tuesday, 2019-08-06 20:00 Check to whom you are replying Meetings, mailing list, IRC, ... http://dorset.lug.org.uk/ New thread, don't hijack: mailto:dorset@mailman.lug.org.uk
