info (Unix)

Info
Stable release	6.8 / July 3, 2021; 3 years ago
Written in	C
Operating system	Unix-like
Platform	Cross-platform
Type	Documentation viewer
License	GNU General Public License
Website	www.gnu.org/software/texinfo/

Info is a software utility which forms a hypertextual, multipage documentation and help viewer working on a command-line interface.

Info reads info files generated by the texinfo program and presents the documentation as a tree with simple commands to traverse the tree and to follow cross references. For instance, pressing the space bar scrolls down within the current tree node or goes to the next node in the current document if already at the bottom of the current node, allowing to read the contents of an info file sequentially. Pressing the backspace key moves in the opposite direction. Furthermore:

] goes to the next node in the current document.
[ goes to the previous node in the current document.
n goes to the next node on the same level as the current node.
p goes to the previous node on the same level as the current node.
u ("up") goes to the parent of the current node.
l goes to the last visited node.
Moving the cursor over a link (a word preceded by an asterisk) and pressing the enter key follows the link.
Pressing the tab key will move the cursor to the next nearest link.

The C implementation of info was designed as the main documentation system of GNU based operating systems and was then ported to other Unix-like operating systems. However, info files had already been in use on ITS emacs. On the TOPS-20 operating system INFO was called XINFO.^[1]

List of Info readers

GNU info, distributed with Texinfo
pinfo
tkman
tkinfo
khelpcenter
emacs
info.vim (Vim plugin)
vinfo (Vim plugin)
GNOME Yelp

References

^ Stacy, Christopher C. (1982), MIT Artificial Intelligence Laboratory Working Papers, WP-235, Getting Started Computing at the AI Lab

[1] Stacy, Christopher C. (1982), MIT Artificial Intelligence Laboratory Working Papers, WP-235, Getting Started Computing at the AI Lab

[1]

v t e Unix command-line interface programs and shell builtins
File system	cat chattr chmod chown chgrp cksum cmp cp dd du df file fuser ln ls mkdir mv pax pwd rm rmdir split tee touch type umask
Processes	at bg crontab fg kill nice ps time
User environment	env exit logname mesg talk tput uname who write
Text processing	awk basename comm csplit cut diff dirname ed ex fold head iconv join m4 more nl paste patch printf read sed sort strings tail tr troff uniq vi wc xargs
Shell builtins	alias cd echo test unset wait
Searching	find grep
Documentation	man
Software development	ar ctags lex make nm strip yacc
Miscellaneous	bc cal expr lp od sleep true and false
Categories Standard Unix programs Unix SUS2008 utilities List

List of Info readers

See also

References