Re: More on "man" and editors

[wlestes@wlestes.uncg.edu]

I thought the following reply might be of general interest so I am
sending it to blinux-list as well.

> I noticed your message on Blinux-list, and have an interest in those
> classic BSD manuals available at ftp.ocf.edu/pub/Library/Computer/
> 
> There appear to be two copies: the Unix programmer's manual and the 4.3
> bsd version. Which is more up to date? Also, does there exist a compressed
> tar archive of the entire documentation set? This material seems slightly
> more up to date than the Bell Labs documents.

for compressed tar archives, many ftp sites allow one to do

get dir.tar.gz

which will tar and compress the directory dir on the fly so you get a
file dir.tar.gz which contains the contents of dir.

If the particular site does not allow such get commands--the symptom
is usually "dir.tar.gz: no such file" or similarly worded
messages--you can use tools like ncftp which have a recursive get
command. also, wget can fetch http and ftp documents and wget also can
fetch directories recursively.

wget can be had from your favorite GNU dealership and ncftp comes
shipped with redhat and maybe other distributions. if you cant find
it, i'd check sunsite.unc.edu/pub/Linux

I'm not sure which of the two sets is more up to date. if memory
serves, i fetched both and they sit on my harddrive at home. I just
tried to check at ocf, but for some reason could not get a directory
listing.

best of luck.

--will