Man Pages – Does the Info Command Display Man Pages?

infoman

I was looking for a way to follow "hyperlinks" in man pages, when I stumbled across the info command, which seemed to display information on commands the same as man but also allows you to tab to hyperlinks (and sadly no vim keybindings, but the arrow keys work)

But it made me wonder if this command was just displaying man pages with different formatting and functionality of display…or if it was displaying something else entirely like a separate set of documentation.

Best Answer

man and info use different primary sources of information: man displays manpages, typically stored in /usr/share/man, while info displays Info documents, typically stored in /usr/share/info. Additionally, Info documents are normally available in a tree structure, rooted in /usr/share/info/dir, the “Directory node” displayed when you start info.

Whether a given manpage contains the same information as its corresponding Info document depends on who authored both. In some cases, they’re produced from a common source, or one is produced from the other; but in many cases they’re different.

GNU info will display a manpage if it doesn’t find an Info document. Pinfo can also display both Info documents and manpages, and it provides hyperlinks in manpages; its key bindings can also be configured to match your tastes.

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