How do I check man pages for what single parameter of the command does?

Question

Example: I am using tar -zxvf command but I don't know what 'x' stands for.

How can I check this single parameter without having to scroll all the way through man tar?

Answer 1

x is for extract.

after you are inside man, type /-x [enter] to search info about the -x parameter,

press n to jump to the next -x match, and N for the previous

Answer 2

You could also grep it out of the man page with some context:

man tar | grep -C5 -- '-x\b'

Answer 3

If you use Emacs, M-x man RET tar, then C-s -x.

Hit C-s repeatedly until you get to the right place, then hit return.

C-r is the same, but backwards. (But both will wrap on a double strike at document top/bottom.)

Also, in cases like this (man page search), case sensitive search is preferable. Examine the case-fold-search variable.

The huge advantage of using your editor to view man pages is that you know all commands so well - navigation, copying, everything you'd like to do, you already know how.