On Unix-like operating system shells, the help command displays information about builtin commands.

This page covers the bash built-in help command.

Description

help displays brief summaries of shell builtin commands. If PATTERN is specified, gives detailed help on all commands matching PATTERN, otherwise the list of help topics is printed.

  • Description
  • Syntax
  • Examples
  • Related commands
  • Linux commands help

Syntax

help [-dms] [PATTERN …]

Options

Examples

help echo

Display a brief description of the builtin shell command echo.

man — Display the manual page of a given command.