EX200 Essential Tools Practice Question
A new Linux administrator needs to read the manual page for the 'ls' command but also wants to search for the word 'color' within the manual. Which command accomplishes this?
⚠ Common exam trap
Candidates often confuse 'man -k' (keyword search in manual page descriptions) with searching within a specific manual page, or they may think piping to grep is equivalent to the interactive search inside the man pager.
Answer choices
Why each option matters
Answer the question above first, then reveal the full breakdown to understand why each option is right or wrong.
Correct answer & explanation
✓
man ls and then type /color
The man command opens the manual page for 'ls', and typing '/color' within the pager (usually less) performs an interactive forward search for the string 'color'. This allows the administrator to read the manual and search for the term in one session.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✗
man -k color
Why it's wrong here
man -k color searches only the man-db whatis database, which stores just the one-line NAME summary from each manual page, not the full text. It returns a list of pages whose title or synopsis mentions 'color', but the ls manual page's NAME section may not even contain 'color', since the color option is discussed in the OPTIONS section. You would still have to open a page and then search inside it, so this command does not directly reveal where --color is documented.
- ✓
man ls and then type /color
Why this is correct
This is the correct approach because man ls opens the ls manual page in a pager (typically less), and typing the slash key (/) invokes the pager's interactive search function. Entering /color immediately jumps to the first occurrence of the string 'color' in the fully formatted page, and pressing 'n' cycles through subsequent matches. This lets you quickly locate the --color option's description right where it appears in the manual.
- ✗
man ls | grep color
Why it's wrong here
Piping man output to grep is unreliable because raw man pages, when rendered on a terminal, contain control sequences such as backspaces and underlining for emphasis. grep interprets those escape characters as part of the lines, so matches may be missed or the output becomes cluttered with formatting artifacts. Additionally, grep prints entire lines, but man page descriptions are wrapped and may span multiple lines, so you get only fragments without context. Unlike the pager's interactive / search, grep cannot let you jump between matches.
- ✗
man color
Why it's wrong here
This command asks man to display a manual page whose name is literally 'color', meaning it will look for a file like color.1, color.2, or similar in the manual page search path. No such standalone page exists because the color options for ls are documented within the ls(1) manual page itself. If no match is found, man will error out with something like 'No manual entry for color', possibly suggesting 'apropos color', but that still won't show you where in the ls page the option is explained.
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Written by Johnson Ajibi, MSc IT Security
Senior Network & Security Engineer · founder of Courseiva
This EX200 practice question is part of Courseiva's free Red Hat certification practice question bank. Courseiva provides original exam-style practice questions with explanations, topic-based practice, mock exams, readiness tracking, and study analytics to help learners prepare for the EX200 exam.