gistfile1.sh

find $(manpath | tr ':' '\n') -iname '*.1' | xargs cat | (LC_CTYPE=C tr -C '[:alnum:]-_' '\n') | egrep '^--[\-_[:alnum:]]+$' | sort | uniq -c | sort -n

egrep: Invalid range end
xargs: cat: terminated by signal 13

your grep has a different syntax; debug it and I'll update

Using grep -P instead of egrep should work everywhere:

find $(manpath | tr ':' '\n') -iname '*.1' | xargs cat | (LC_CTYPE=C tr -C '[:alnum:]-_' '\n') | grep -P '^--[\-_[:alnum:]]+$' | sort | uniq -c | sort -n
      1 --crate-type
      1 --emit
      1 --html-after-content
      1 --html-before-content
      1 --html-in-header
      1 --input-format
      1 --library-path
      1 --no-defaults
      1 --output
      1 --output-format
      1 --plugin-path
      1 --plugins
      1 --release
      1 --target
      2 --help
      2 --passes
      4 --init
      5 --proxy-server

http://twitter.com/jxxf/

$ grep -P
usage: grep [-abcDEFGHhIiJLlmnOoPqRSsUVvwxZ] [-A num] [-B num] [-C[num]]

wait, I suck

Wait, no, I don't suck. My grep's usage says that it supports -P. But the man page doesn't list -P, and trying to use it results in usage. OK.

$ grep -P foo
usage: grep [-abcDEFGHhIiJLlmnOoPqRSsUVvwxZ] [-A num] [-B num] [-C[num]]

heh… unix…

igalic@levix ~ % find $(manpath | tr ':' '\n') -iname '*.1' | xargs cat | (LC_CTYPE=C tr -C '[:alnum:]-_' '\n') | grep -P '^--[\-_[:alnum:]]+$'
-----------------------------------------------------------------
-----------------------------------------------------------------
-----------------------------------------------------------------
-----------------------------------------------------------------
-----------------------------------------------------------------
-----------------------------------------------------------------
igalic@levix ~ % 

(i got the same when i just replaced egrep with ack [which is essentially perl])

(this is some bitter sweet irony ;)

cool, looks like Apple removed -P in 10.8 but never updated the spec for it: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/16658333/grep-p-no-longer-works-how-can-i-rewrite-my-searches

computers

can someone not on OS X try this version, with perl instead of grep?

find $(manpath | tr ':' '\n') -iname '*.1' | xargs cat | (LC_CTYPE=C tr -C '[:alnum:]-_' '\n') | perl -ne 'print if /^--[\w-]+$/' | grep -v '^-*$' | sort | uniq -c | sort -n

Err, not on OSX.

DISTRIB_DESCRIPTION="Ubuntu 12.04 LTS"
vagrant@utility01:~$ find $(manpath | tr ':' '\n') -iname '*.1' | xargs cat | (LC_CTYPE=C tr -C '[:alnum:]-_' '\n') | perl -ne 'print if /^--[\w-]+$/' | grep -v '^-*$' | sort | uniq -c | sort -n
vagrant@utility01:~$ echo $?
0

try replacing LC_CTYPE with LC_ALL

well @colby I still want to figure out why tr is bailing like that

Sorry, updated with something not OSX. I would assume you're on OSX.

Running same VM as above.

vagrant@utility01:~$ find $(manpath | tr ':' '\n') -iname '*.1' | xargs cat | (LC_ALL=C tr -C '[:alnum:]-_' '\n') | perl -ne 'print if /^--[\w-]+$/' | grep -v '^-*$' | sort | uniq -c | sort -n
vagrant@utility01:~$ echo $?
0

I give up, fuck computers

I'm on Ubuntu 14.10. Your command produces no output.

(That would be because man pages are compressed on Debian. Change the find to use -iname '*.1' -o -iname '*.1.gz' and xargs cat to xargs zcat.)

Also, the final sort should be sort -n, otherwise it puts 93 between 8 and 9. This is be locale-specific -- LC_COLLATE=C sort doesn't ignore leading whitespace.

the final sort is sort -n

Now I'm wondering what are those 162 commands that support --1v. And I suspect 28 -----syntax and 17 -----examples aren't really options.

(It's difficult to copy and paste a line of text from a horizontally-scrolling div. I accidentally the final -n. Sorry.)

:; find $(manpath | tr ':' '\n') -iname '*.1' | xargs cat | (LC_CTYPE=C tr -C '[:alnum:]-_' '\n') | perl -ne 'print if /^--[\w-]+$/' | grep -v '^-*$' | sort | uniq -c | sort -n
ksh: manpath: not found
tr: unknown option -- C
usage: tr [-cs] string1 string2
       tr [-c] -d string1
       tr [-c] -s string1
       tr [-c] -ds string1 string2
find: unknown option -- i
find: unknown option -- n
find: unknown option -- a
find: unknown option -- m
find: unknown option -- e
find: *.1: No such file or directory

:; uname -mrs
NetBSD 6.1.5 amd64

(FWIW, if I were chasing portability in shell programming, I'd probably punt on making this a one-liner. Make a script, define well-named functions, make their composition evident, then futz with implementation details of each function.)

OS X's zcat append ".Z" to all paths not already ending with it, so that doesn't work. Using gzcat instead fails because it tries to decompress everything, so uncompressed man pages blow up. I bet that Ubuntu has saved its users as much as ten megabytes of disk space by compressing the man pages! :/

triple click selects full lines of text, which is useful for situations like this (although I don't know whether various Linux dinguses will do the right thing there; probably not)