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now why would you want a simple list when the lists are all there to start with (assuming you had the sense to put at least the basic man pages on)

makewhatis
apropos

are the only two things you really need to know about - makewhatis will make a database of lookup strings to reference man pages - apropos (or whatis - either works) will lookup a command based on a short description string

e.g.
apropos "list directory"
dir (1) - list directory contents
ls (1) - list directory contents
vdir (1) - list directory contents

you can then either check out the man page (using man ) or try --help for some options/info