Get explanations for command line options for most shell commands

getarg

#!/usr/bin/bash

# See what arguments do without having to go through a man page
# This only works on man pages that have an "options summary" section or something similar 
# The expected format is thus: {whitespace}{flag,optional multichar flag}{whitespace}{short explanation}

count=1
tmp=$(mktemp)
man $1 > $tmp

echo ""

for flag in "$@"
do
        if [[ "$count" == 1 ]]; then
                count+=1
                continue
        fi
        cat $tmp | grep -P "^\s+$flag" 2>/dev/null | head -n 1 | sed -e "s/^\s\+//g" | sed -e "s/\s\{2,\}/\n=>  /g"
        echo ""
done