how2: stackoverflow from the terminal

how2 finds the simplest way to do something in a unix shell. It's like

man

Install

You can install it via npm:

npm install -g how-2

if it gives you EACCES errors, you need to fix npm permissions. Or you can just use

sudo npm install -g how-2

Usage

If you don't specify a language it defaults to Bash unix command line. how2 tries to give you immediately the most likely answer:

After that you can press SPACE to go to the interactive mode, where you can choose a different stackoverflow question/answer.

You can use

-l lang

Copy-Paste with mouse

When you are in "interactive mode" (after you press SPACE), if you want to copy-paste more than one line you can use block-select:

With Ubuntu try holding

Ctrl+Alt

Alt+Cmd

(thanks to @danielkop for this suggestion).

Can i use it behind Proxy ?

Yes, you need to use

HTTP_PROXY

HTTPS_PROXY

For example, you could alias the proxy seetings in your

~/.bash_profile

alias how2="HTTPS_PROXY='your_proxy:8888' how2"

How does it work?

It uses Google and Stackoverflow APIs, because Stackoverflow search on its own doesn't works as well.

Why?

Because I can never remember how to do certain things. And reading man pages always takes too long.

Taken from https://xkcd.com/1168/