The synopsis for the help builtin is missing the -m option: help: help [-ds] [pattern ...]
Also, the PATTERN is not a pattern in the usual sense, it the beginning of a command: $ help -d c caller - Return the context of the current subroutine call. case - Execute commands based on pattern matching. cd - Change the shell working directory. command - Execute a simple command or display information about commands. compgen - Display possible completions depending on the options. complete - Specify how arguments are to be completed by Readline. compopt - Modify or display completion options. continue - Resume for, while, or until loops. coproc - Create a coprocess named NAME. As a result, it is not possible to have help print just the help for time or read, for example, they always include times, readarray, and readonly: $ help -d time read time - Report time consumed by pipeline's execution. times - Display process times. read - Read a line from the standard input and split it into fields. readarray - Read lines from a file into an array variable. readonly - Mark shell variables as unchangeable. -- Chris F.A. Johnson, webmaster <http://woodbine-gerrard.com> =================================================================== Author: Shell Scripting Recipes: A Problem-Solution Approach (2005, Apress)