HELP(1)

NAME
help - UNIX System help Facility

SYNOPSIS
help

[ help ] starter

[ help ] usage [ -d ] [ -e ] [ -o ] [ command_name ]

[ help ] locate [ keyword1 [ keyword2 ] ... ]

[ help ] glossary [ term ]

help arg1 [ arg2 ... ]

DESCRIPTION
The UNIX System help Facility provides on-line assistance for UNIX system users.

Without arguments, help prints a menu of available on-line assistance commands with a short description of their functions. The commands and their descriptions are:

    COMMAND | DESCRIPTION
    starter | information about the UNIX system for the
     | beginning user
    usage | UNIX system command usage information
    locate | locate UNIX system commands using function-related
     | keywords
    glossary | definitions of UNIX system technical terms

The user may choose one of the above commands by entering its corresponding letter (given in the menu), or may exit to the shell by typing q (for ``quit'').

With arguments, help directly invokes the named on-line assistance command, bypassing the initial help menu. The commands starter, locate, usage, and glossary, optionally preceded by the word help, may also be specified at shell level. When executing glossary from shell level some of the symbols listed in the glossary must be escaped to be understood by the facility. For a list of symbols refer to the glossary(1) manual page.

From any screen in the facility, a user may execute a command via the shell (sh(1)) by typing a ! and the command to be executed. The screen will be redrawn if the command that was executed was entered at a first level prompt. If entered at any other prompt level, only the prompt will be redrawn.

By default, the help facility scrolls the data that is presented to the user. If a user prefers to have the screen clear before printing the data (non-scrolling), a variable must be defined in the user's .profile file called SCROLL. The variable SCROLL must be set to no and exported for non-scrolling to occur. If the user later decides that scrolling is desired, the variable SCROLL must be set to yes or deleted from the user's .profile file.

If the first argument to help is different from the four mentioned above, help assumes information is being requested in the form of the previous help command (often referred to as the SCCS help command, and now obsolete). The arguments may be either message numbers (which normally appear in parentheses following messages) or command names, of one of the following types:

type1
    Begins with non-numerics, ends in numerics. The non-numeric prefix is usually an abbreviation for the program or set of routines which produced the message (e.g., ge3 for message 3 from the get command).

type2
    Does not contain numerics (as a command, such as get)

type3
    Is all numeric (e.g., 212)

Further information on the starter, locate, usage, and glossary commands may be found on the starter(1), locate(1), usage(1), and glossary(1) manual pages, respectively.

SEE ALSO
starter(1), locate(1), usage(1), glossary(1).

WARNINGS

If the TERM variable is not set in the user's .profile file, then TERM will default to the terminal value type 450 ( a hardcopy terminal ). For a list of valid terminal types, refer to term(5) in the UNIX Programmer's Manual. The help facility assumes that tabs are set on the user's terminal.