tldr

Print the tldr page for a specific command (hint: this is how you got here!)

$ tldr [command]

$ tldr [command] [subcommand]

$ tldr [[-L|--language]] [language_code] [command]

$ tldr [[-p|--platform]] [android|common|freebsd|linux|osx|netbsd|openbsd|sunos|windows] [command]

$ tldr [[-u|--update]]

$ tldr [[-l|--list]]

$ tldr [[-l|--list]] | grep [command] | column

$ tldr [[-l|--list]] | shuf [[-n|--head-count]] 1 | xargs tldr

tldr [options] command
tldr [options] --list
tldr [options] --update
tldr [options] --version
tldr [options] --help

-l, --list
    List all available commands in the cache.

-u, --update
    Update the local cache of tldr pages from the remote repository.

-p , --platform
    Specify the platform (e.g., linux, osx, windows, common) for which to show pages.

-c , --color
    Set the color theme for output.

-r , --repository
    Specify an alternative repository URL for pages.

-s , --language
    Specify the language for pages (e.g., en, es, fr).

-v, --version
    Display the version of the tldr client.

-h, --help
    Display the help message and exit.

The tldr command provides simplified, community-maintained examples of common command-line tools. Unlike traditional man pages, which can be exhaustive and intimidating, tldr focuses on practical, real-world use cases, offering a concise cheatsheet for quick reference.

It aims to distill the most frequent and useful invocations of a command into a few easy-to-understand examples, often showing how to perform common tasks without requiring users to sift through extensive documentation. The name itself is an acronym for "Too Long; Didn't Read", reflecting its purpose to provide immediate, actionable information.

Users can easily find examples for almost any common Linux command, making it an invaluable resource for both beginners and experienced users looking for a quick reminder or a new trick.

The tldr pages are community-maintained, meaning they are not official documentation and might occasionally contain inaccuracies or be incomplete for very niche use cases. They focus on common scenarios, so advanced or less frequent command options might not be covered. Additionally, the client typically requires an internet connection to update its local cache of pages.

Users can contribute new pages or improve existing ones by submitting pull requests to the official tldr GitHub repository, fostering a collaborative and ever-growing knowledge base.

While the core tldr pages are just markdown files, there are numerous client implementations available in various programming languages (Node.js, Python, Go, Rust, etc.), allowing users to interact with the pages using their preferred environment.

The tldr project emerged from the internet culture's "Too Long; Didn't Read" acronym, reflecting a desire for concise information. It began as a collaborative open-source effort, primarily hosted on GitHub, to address the common frustration with the verbosity of traditional man pages. The goal was to provide quick, example-driven documentation that's immediately useful for practical command-line tasks, rapidly gaining popularity within the developer community since its inception around 2015.

man(1), info(1), apropos(1)