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One thing that always infuriates me:

If I go to --help or the man page for your command, and don't see a real example of how to use it immediately, you've failed me as a user.

Seeing your syntax tree and a list of every option and its description doesn't help me when I'm first trying to use your program. I just want to see one or two quick examples of real commands with a short sentence explaining each. After that I'll dive into the mess that is the dozens of flags and inputs to decipher exactly what I want.




It always struck me as odd that man pages tend to have the EXAMPLES section as the last section of the document. I really would like it the other way around but this kinda fits with a bottom-up approach to learning. Look at the small details then get the full picture and how it's supposed to be used.


I've seen a few discussions of this around.

I agree with you, but there are some who believe that examples do not belong in manages (not sure what their rationale is).


In my experience, it's from some GNU folk who like their god-forsaken abomination that is info docs.


man docs have a specific format, a followed by b followed by c, etc. Examples are towards the end, near bugs and author.

It may not be how you want it, but at least it's consistent. shift-G will take you straight to the end, with hopefully some examples.




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