The Naming Conventions

nodisk · 12-14-2005, 11:48 AM

In man pages or online documentation, a newbie often encounters something like this: nmake[4], Perl[3], and so on. What are these numbers and what do they mean?

michapma · 12-14-2005, 11:51 AM

You know what? I don't know.

But the great thing about man pages is that they are so extensive. Try the following:

$ man man

Let us know what you find out! (I'm not being smart.)

michapma · 12-14-2005, 12:05 PM

Hmm, now that you got me curious, I had to look it up. I found it (no surprise) in rute:

Quote:

Man pages are referenced with notation like cp(1), for the cp command in Section 1, which can be read with man 1 cp.

http://rute.2038bug.com/node7.html.g...00000000000000

Not so mysterious.

nodisk · 12-14-2005, 12:13 PM

I found out that if you type for example

Code:

man perl

you find out at the top left and top right something like

Code:

PERL(1)

It may mean that this Section 1 of the man page for perl

michapma · 12-14-2005, 12:19 PM

See above.

Padma · 12-14-2005, 02:26 PM

Just remember that the "sections" are not sections *within* the man page, but the section the man page belongs to. For instance, off the top of my head, Section 1 is for most normal user commands. Section 3 is for programming languages, Section 5 is for file formats (e.g., /etc/fstab), Section 8 is for games. I used to know all the sections, but I can't find the info very quickly right now...

michapma · 12-15-2005, 05:15 AM

http://man.linuxquestions.org/

Check out the Section pull-down list.