Manual
From Hackepedia
Jump to navigationJump to searchMost UNIX systems have online manual pages. The types of manpages have sections which they are grouped in. Here is the layout of BSD:
- Section 1
- General commands (tools and utilities)
- Section 2
- System calls and error numbers
- Section 3
- Library functions, especially for C and Tk
- Section 4
- Special files and hardware support
- Section 5
- File formats, especially configuration files
- Section 6
- Games
- Section 7
- Miscellaneous information pages
- Section 8
- System maintenance and operation commands
- Section 9
- Kernel internals
When someone tells you to run "man 6 tetris", that means that you should read the tetris manpage found in section 6 of the manpages. Sometimes the same manpage name exists, but in different sections. One example is the fstat manpage it exists in sections 1 and 2. The lower number sections take precedence over higher numbered sections. Thus, to see the manpage for fstat in section 2 you would type:
$ man 2 fstat
Similarely functions, syscalls or commands are sometimes mentioned with the section of manpages in brackets behind them like so: fstat(2), you'll see this mentioned a lot in this wiki.