MPE/iX Shell and Utilities Reference Manual, Vol 1

help(1) MPE/iX Shell and Utilities help(1)
NAME
help — display brief command explanations
SYNOPSIS
help [command ...]
DESCRIPTION
The help command provides information about the MPE/iX Shell and Utilities utility specified
by command.
help acts as a mnemonic reference tool for command options. It offers more information
than the standard usage message displayed by all commands, but considerably less than the
man pages. Output for a single command is intentionally brief and usually fits on one screen.
help first looks for a file named /usr/man/man1/command.1. If such a file exists,
help looks for lines of the form
.HS
text...
.HE
anywhere in that file, and displays the text as the help message.
If help cannot find this file, it looks in the help file provided in /etc/helpfile.
help uses a helpindex file to locate information in the help file quickly If help cannot find a
helpindex file, it creates one in the same directory that holds the help file. If you change the
help file (for example, add new information), help checks the modification dates and
rebuilds the helpindex file if the help file has a later date.
You can assign a list of directories (separated by colons) to the environment variable
HELP .
help searches these directories (in addition to /etc) when looking for the helpfile and
helpindex files. Such directories can hold help information you create yourself.
ENVIRONMENT VARIABLES
help uses the following environment variables:
HELP
contains a list of additional path names to search when looking for helpfile and
helpindex files.
HELPCMD
contains the path name for an additional command to execute if the MPE/iX Shell and
Utilities help command fails to find help. This lets users add specialized help com-
mands for their environment.
Commands and Utilities 1-265