On Thu, Dec 18, 2003 at 12:41:41AM +0000, Colin Watson wrote: > On Wed, Dec 17, 2003 at 10:14:54PM +0100, Jan Minar wrote: > > > Try man xxx | col -b > text-filename > > > > This actually should not work, you have to tell man(1) it should send the > > formatted manpage to stdout, instead of messing with the pager. > > This is incorrect; it is intended to work as Lou described, and it does > work. man(1) checks whether its standard output is a terminal before
Shame on me... I *did* try it, but, by mistake, not on the quick machine, but on the slow one--so after I waited for too long, I decided it doesn't work (still I think it didn't work this way always). > Narrowing the page does work even if man's output is a terminal. You're talking unstable, ain't you ;-) At least in man-db 2.3.20-18.woody.4, it doesn't. Thank you for your insightfulness.
pgp00000.pgp
Description: PGP signature