Thanks Sina, In your first post you said: ls --help | wc -l Wouldn't it only count the number of lines within the help file of the ls command? The grep is a much better idea, I tried something like: ls --help | grep -c '-' and it returned 51 because it counted both '-' and '--', but don't know how to ... is there a logical or operator for situations like this? I want to check for '-' or '--' How to do that? Many thanks! Ned ----- Original Message ----- From: "Sina Bahram" <sbahram@xxxxxxxxx> To: "'Speakup is a screen review system for Linux.'" <speakup at braille.uwo.ca> Sent: Wednesday, March 23, 2005 11:28 PM Subject: RE: how to chek for the number of options in an app > Hi ned, > > ... To go back to what I said before, try playing with grep, so you could > at > least set up a regular expression for only the lines that have commands on > them ... > > Take care, > Sina > > -----Original Message----- > From: speakup-bounces at braille.uwo.ca > [mailto:speakup-bounces at braille.uwo.ca] > On Behalf Of Ned > Sent: Wednesday, March 23, 2005 3:19 PM > To: Speakup is a screen review system for Linux. > Subject: how to chek for the number of options in an app > > Hi all, > Is there a way to check, without counting by hand within the manual, how > many options are there for a command such as ls, more, bash, etc? > If not, what's the shortest way of doing that through the man? > > Many thanks in advance! > Ned > _______________________________________________ > Speakup mailing list > Speakup at braille.uwo.ca > http://speech.braille.uwo.ca/mailman/listinfo/speakup > > > _______________________________________________ > Speakup mailing list > Speakup at braille.uwo.ca > http://speech.braille.uwo.ca/mailman/listinfo/speakup >