/<\(

For those wondering, man, which uses less as a pager, has vi-like key bindings.

"/<\(" starts a regex-based search for "<(" (you must escape the open paren).

This is the origin of the regex literal syntax in most programming languages that have them. It was first introduced by Ken Thompson in the "ed" text editor.

Ahhhh..haaa...ha....DOH! I've never even thought of looking at the manpage for bash before. Thanks, you've just made my life better.

I try to read it about once a year. I always find something new before my eyes glaze over and I'm done until next year.

If you're interested in stock Posix shell rather than bashish, the dash man page is a whole lot shorter and easier to follow, makes a great concise reference.

Nitpick: should read "POSIX-compliant shell", there isn't a "stock POSIX shell"

That's weird, isn't it? You wanted to know how to use a feature of bash and didn't check the manual?

Do you expect `man python` to output the full reference for the Python programming language?

I would, especially considering that "The Python Language Reference" is probably shorter than bash's manpage.

I wish that it did. The man pages really are supposed to be the manual.

I agree, though it does tell you where to look for it.