HELP(1)

NAME
help - print ORCA help file

SYNOPSIS
help program_name

DESCRIPTION
The ORCA/Shell expects all of its utilities to be in the directory specified by GS/OS prefix 17. The brief descriptions for these utilities (and for built-in commands) are kept in the directory 17/help, and are printed, under the ORCA/Shell, by the built-in command help.

Because this shell built-in is not available under GNO, the help program is used to access these description files. It is invoked in the same manner as under ORCA/Shell, but also provides pagination.

BUGS
The GNO implementation of help will only accept one program_name.

help is currently implemented as a very dumb gsh(1) script. When sh(1) becomes available, help should be updated to accept multiple file names, recognise the PAGER environment variable, and give cleaner diagnostics when program_name does not have a description file in 17/help.

HISTORY
The help program appeared in GNO v1.0 as an emulation of the ORCA/Shell built-in command.