esoteric question

[Mike]

Since *nix is by and for developers, there is a wealth of information
regarding not only system commands, but also system programming, via man
pages.  For example, 'open' is not only a function in C but has other uses
in Linux as well.  In order to differentiate, there are different
man sections which cover different topics:

open (1)             - start a program on a new virtual terminal (VT).
open (n)             - Open a file-based or command pipeline channel
open, creat (2)      - open and possibly create a file or device

Xman describes the different sections well enough:

1 - User Commands
2 - System Calls
3 - Subroutines
4 - Devices
5 - File Formats
6 - Games
7 - Miscellaneous
8 - System Administration
l - Local
n - New

You can do 'man man' to learn about cat/preformatted pages.

---------------------------
-=<(| mike at boobaz.net |)>=-

On Tue, 22 Aug 2000, Brett G. Monroe wrote:

|All  right, if there are any old-fogie unix guru types on this list (or if
|you're not and still know the answer), I've got are rather esoteric
|question for ya.  What is the purpose of the different man
|chapter dirs?  Is there rhyme or reason to the way man pages are put into
|them?  When I make install a newly compiled app, it usually installs a man
|page into some random man dir.  Is it just up to the developer where the
|man goes?  I tried looking at www.manpages.com but couldn't find an
|answer. ;)
|
| )  |o)____               ) Dept. Microbiology		 )
|(   |0)re||  |\/|        (  HS K443B     616-4285	(
| )           |  |onroe    ) bmonroe at u.washington.edu	 )
|(							(
| )  I think we should partition Microsoft into an OS	 )
|(   company (called "C:") and an apps company ("D:").	(
| )  Then we should blow away both partitions.		 )		
|(   			--Doug Steinfeld		(
|