From owner-freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Wed Oct 25 07:49:04 2017 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@mailman.ysv.freebsd.org Received: from mx1.freebsd.org (mx1.freebsd.org [IPv6:2001:1900:2254:206a::19:1]) by mailman.ysv.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 4C26CE41A5A for ; Wed, 25 Oct 2017 07:49:04 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from freebsd@qeng-ho.org) Received: from bede.home.qeng-ho.org (bede.qeng-ho.org [217.155.128.241]) (using TLSv1.2 with cipher ECDHE-RSA-AES256-GCM-SHA384 (256/256 bits)) (Client CN "fileserver.home.qeng-ho.org", Issuer "fileserver.home.qeng-ho.org" (not verified)) by mx1.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTPS id D48C419AC; Wed, 25 Oct 2017 07:49:02 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from freebsd@qeng-ho.org) Received: from arthur.home.qeng-ho.org (arthur.home.qeng-ho.org [172.23.1.2]) by bede.home.qeng-ho.org (8.15.2/8.15.2) with ESMTP id v9P7eXEC029288; Wed, 25 Oct 2017 08:40:33 +0100 (BST) (envelope-from freebsd@qeng-ho.org) Subject: Re: A request to segregate man pages for shell built-ins To: Matthew Seaman , freebsd-questions@freebsd.org References: From: Arthur Chance Message-ID: <6f62db58-8220-0fe4-133b-410da2f58579@qeng-ho.org> Date: Wed, 25 Oct 2017 08:40:33 +0100 User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; FreeBSD amd64; rv:52.0) Gecko/20100101 Thunderbird/52.4.0 MIME-Version: 1.0 In-Reply-To: Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8 Content-Language: en-GB Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-BeenThere: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.23 Precedence: list List-Id: User questions List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Wed, 25 Oct 2017 07:49:04 -0000 On 25/10/2017 07:14, Matthew Seaman wrote: > On 25/10/2017 03:23, Manish Jain wrote: >> (Note : some built-ins (e.g. 'test') do have their own man pages) > > That's because there's a stand-alone test(1) as well as a shell built-in. > >> Is it not possible to create separate man pages for the shell built-ins >> too ? Or at least ensure that invoking the built-in with --help gets the >> necessary information ? > > I'm sure creating separate man pages is possible: it's just a question > of someone stepping up and doing the work. "man builtin" suggests there might be a few problems in organising the new pages. Some builtins work in both shells, others in only one, some have external equivalents, others don't. Some builtins work differently in the two shells. For example, do we have one page for echo or three: echo(bin), echo(sh) and echo(csh)? /bin/echo has a single flag, the sh builtin has two and the csh builtin mimics one or the other depending on a csh variable setting. Yes, it just needs someone to do the work but making the new pages coherent and clear would take more effort than it first seems. -- An amusing coincidence: log2(58) = 5.858 (to 0.0003% accuracy).