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Comment by gorgoiler | Hacker News Reader

Ahhh, and of course:

  $ foo -h | grep bar
  The
  …
  …
  entire
  …
  …
  usage
  …
  …
  message!

Never stop being you, Free Software, you lovable and quirky bunch of old coots.

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I think this is because some tools print the usage message to stderr rather than stdout (ironically I couldn't find an example while typing up this reply). Try:

$ foo -h 2>&1 | grep bar

Thanks, but you’re explaining that my finger hurts because I hit it with a hammer when I’m complaining (in a kind hearted way, I hope!) that Free Software hammers have angled heads which skid off the nail sideways onto my finger.

  $ zfs -h | grep help

(Edit: ah, not a very fair example, and a topical one too :)

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