Wednesday, December 1, 2010

Output man pages as plain text with col

There is an easy way to convert man pages into simple, non-redundant text.
To save a copy of any man page to text simply type:

man command_name | col -b > output_file_name

e.g.;

man ls | col -b > grep.txt

This can be especially useful for larger man pages, as you can now open
and work with the text file in any GUI text editor.

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