Dave, When given a strange name or command (sed, grep) using "man sed" or "man grep" are likely to give some information. The information is likely to be brief and without specific examples, but it often gives significant hints, and may put the person in a position where he (forgive the gender-bender, please) is able to ask a more specific question, better understand a reply, and certainly demonstrate that he's gone to some minimal effort of his own before asking the list. Also, "apropos" followed by the unknown term, can bring helpful hints, i.e., commands that have the term in their "man" page. Then, using "man" on the specific command, and then searching the "man" pages for the original term will at least give some context for later discussion. The rudeness (and I can accept it as rudeness or not, as I can think of a city bus as noisy or part of the environment) I take to be a sign of the "expressive poverty" of the responder, at that particular moment. I presume they're sensitive enough to comprehend the questioner's desire for an answer, otherwise they wouldn't reply at all, but for any of a million possible reasons they are not in the possession of sufficient patience to compose a useful reply. (That said, I, also, think that there is some use to the reply, in that there is likely to come a moment when the poster will deeply desire an answer, and the list will not be easily, or quickly, available. If he has been challenged previously by the "rt_m," and taken it as advice and not insult, then he has been forced to ask himself, "Hmmm, where, or what's, the manual?" If he finds an answer to that question, on his own, or with others help, then he is better prepared to help himself when others are not quickly available.) Somewhere I read that a teacher had as an epitaph, "For forty years I've sold water by the river." Best regards, Gerry ps - If you're concerned about Heaven or Hell, I believe you're thinking about terribly important things,... but don't forget dinner or your parents' birthdays. The greatest wisdom repeated every moment soon goes unnoticed. Dave Mielke wrote: > > Hi: > > I haven't seen the message which instructed Jim to RTFM, but I'm going to > respond to it. Firstly, since we all know what the third letter in that acronym > stands for, surely, due alone to its vulgarity, we can all accept that it has > no place in anyone's response. Secondly, he asked a question whose answer > required knowledge of regular expressions, and they, even to the best of us, > can be rather difficult to learn. Thirdly, how was he supposed to know that > commands with such strange names as "sed" and "grep" are what he needed to look > into? Such a terse and rude response, therefore, especially when he'd asked a > sincere question very politely, was entirely out of place. > > -- > Dave Mielke | 2213 Fox Crescent | I believe that the Bible is the > Phone: 1-613-726-0014 | Ottawa, Ontario | Word of God. Please contact me > EMail: dave@mielke.cc | Canada K2A 1H7 | if you're concerned about Hell. > > _______________________________________________ > > Blinux-list@redhat.com > https://listman.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/blinux-list