From owner-freebsd-newbies Mon Jul 19 9:14:47 1999 Delivered-To: freebsd-newbies@freebsd.org Received: from fellspt.charm.net (fellspt.charm.net [199.0.70.29]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 9E500151D5 for ; Mon, 19 Jul 1999 09:14:45 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from dutch@charm.net) Received: from charm.net (coretel-116-083.charm.net [209.143.116.83]) by fellspt.charm.net (8.9.3/8.9.3) with ESMTP id MAA19468; Mon, 19 Jul 1999 12:13:35 -0400 (EDT) Message-ID: <37934E97.B9F48A49@charm.net> Date: Mon, 19 Jul 1999 12:13:11 -0400 From: Dutch Collins X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.61 [en] (Win98; I) X-Accept-Language: en MIME-Version: 1.0 To: James Gill Cc: freebsd-newbies@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: question(0) References: Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: owner-freebsd-newbies@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.org James Gill wrote: > > Often in conversations people will refer to system programs and stuff with a > number in parentheses afterwords. What is the significance of the numbers? > What is their significance when there is no number within? Calling a > manpage for a different (number) brings up a different manual page i think. > > for example a subject line from -security from last week: > Re: OpenBSD's strlcpy(3) and strlcat(3) > > ===================================== > James Gill * http://www.topsecret.net > ===================================== > I usually do not quote stuff from The Books, but; "References to Manual pages are given as 'name(section)' thus sh(1) refers to the shell manual entry in section 1.", historical. User commands where grouped together in section one so, (1) after a command tells you it is a User (shell) Command. Some commands are also subroutines for C, therefore, (3), or a system call (2). If a function, as in doing something, not f(x) kind of thing, is used in say, Command (1), System Call (2), and maybe others the name will be slightly different. Don't want to confuse anyone - that means the OS not the user. try this: try http://www.freebsd.org/handbook/basics.html -d To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-newbies" in the body of the message