Unix man page lookup (Wednesday Emacs blogging)

Today's a quick one:

; man page lookup (by default, f1 is help, but I
; already know how to bring that up using C-h)
(define-key global-map [f1]
  (lambda () (interactive)
    (manual-entry (current-word))))

As the comment implies, by default f1's bound to Emacs help. But of course, longtime Emacs users know how to acces the rich interactive help system using C-h; C-h ? ? gives you a list of the main C-h functions, but here are some favorites that I hit reflexively almost once a day:

C-h a

"Apropos" help: looks up anything (including both functions and variables) matching a substring

C-h b

List all key bindings in the current mode

C-h k keystroke

Look up the function bound to this keystroke

So, what do you really need that f1 help for? Looking up a Unix manpage on the current word is much more useful, especially in M-x shell mode or other modes where you're editing shell commands.