help(1)               MPE/iX Shell and Utilities               help(1)
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  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.  Out-
       put 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 commands for
            their environment.

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  help(1)               MPE/iX Shell and Utilities               help(1)
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  FILES
       help uses the following files:

       /usr/man/man1/*.1
            unformatted manual entries.

       /etc/helpfile
            help information obtained from man pages.

       /etc/helpindex
            an index to /etc/helpfile to speed up the search for help
            information.

  DIAGNOSTICS
       Possible exit status values are:

       0  Successful completion.

       1  Failure because the help file could not be found or because it
          contained no information on the desired command.

  Messages

       Message:  No information on command
       Cause:    help was unable to find any help information for the
                 specified command.
       Action:   Check that command was spelled properly.

  PORTABILITY
       Some UNIX systems.

  MPE/iX NOTES
       The help command provided by MPE/iX Shell and Utilities should
       not be confused with the MPE/iX help subsystem.

       For more information on how the current MPE/iX implementation may
       affect the operation of this utility, see Appendix A, MPE/iX
       Implementation Considerations.

  SEE ALSO
       man(1), environ(3)

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