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<h4 class="subsection" id="Help-and-Documentation-1"><span>1.2.7 Help and Documentation<a class="copiable-link" href="#Help-and-Documentation-1"> ¶</a></span></h4>
<p>Octave has an extensive help facility. The same documentation that is
available in printed form is also available from the Octave prompt,
because both forms of the documentation are created from the same input
file.
</p>
<p>In order to get good help you first need to know the name of the command
that you want to use. The name of this function may not always be
obvious, but a good place to start is to type <code class="code">help --list</code>.
This will show you all the operators, keywords, built-in functions,
and loadable functions available in the current session of Octave. An
alternative is to search the documentation using the <code class="code">lookfor</code>
function (described in <a class="ref" href="Getting-Help.html">Commands for Getting Help</a>).
</p>
<p>Once you know the name of the function you wish to use, you can get more
help on the function by simply including the name as an argument to help.
For example,
</p>
<div class="example">
<pre class="example-preformatted">help plot
</pre></div>
<p>will display the help text for the <code class="code">plot</code> function.
</p>
<p>The part of Octave’s help facility that allows you to read the complete
text of the printed manual from within Octave normally uses a separate
program called Info. When you invoke Info you will be put into a menu
driven program that contains the entire Octave manual. Help for using
Info is provided in this manual, see <a class="pxref" href="Getting-Help.html">Commands for Getting Help</a>.
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