Accessing PHP documentation using 'pman'

PHP has a ridiculous amount of in-built functions. Even though I code in it daily, I am still surprised to find a new one. It was not until recently that I discovered strip_tags, which saved me an ample amount of time that I would have spent writing my own implementation. My philosophy now is that if there is a function you require, PHP most likely already has it.

In spite of this wealth of functions, however, I hate having to load a browser to visit php.net. I now spend too much time in the terminal. I love the UNIX ethos of being able to run a ‘man’ command to quickly display documentation on a specific command. What I want is the same capability for PHP functions. Thankfully, this need has been fulfilled in the form of ‘pman’.

Installation

Installing ‘pman’ is incredibly easy using PEAR. All you have to do is run the command below:

$ pear install doc.php.net/pman

Once the installation has been successfully completed, you can access manual pages for PHP functions by calling ‘pman’ followed by the function name. For example:

$ pman strip_tags

I’m feeling lucky

As an extra treat to get acquainted with as many functions as possible, I have created a simple bash script. Although it is a very crude implementation, it randomly selects a PHP manual page and displays it.

function rpman() {
  cd `pman -w`
  cd `ls | head -1`
  a=(*);
  func=$(echo ${a[$((RANDOM % ${#a[@]}))]} |
         sed -E 's/([^0-9]).[0-9].gz/\1/')
  pman $func
}