From owner-freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Wed Oct 25 17:25:54 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 38F3CE4FFDF for ; Wed, 25 Oct 2017 17:25:54 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from feenberg@nber.org) Received: from mail2.nber.org (mail2.nber.org [198.71.6.79]) by mx1.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id DAF2376AC8 for ; Wed, 25 Oct 2017 17:25:53 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from feenberg@nber.org) Received: from sas1.nber.org (sas1.nber.org [198.71.6.89]) by mail2.nber.org (8.15.2/8.15.2) with ESMTPS id v9PHIM8d040099 (version=TLSv1.2 cipher=ECDHE-RSA-AES256-GCM-SHA384 bits=256 verify=NOT); Wed, 25 Oct 2017 13:18:27 -0400 (EDT) (envelope-from feenberg@nber.org) Date: Wed, 25 Oct 2017 13:18:17 -0400 (EDT) From: Daniel Feenberg To: Polytropon cc: Manish Jain , "freebsd-questions@freebsd.org" Subject: Re: A request to segregate man pages for shell built-ins In-Reply-To: <20171025151647.b1a1d512.freebsd@edvax.de> Message-ID: References: <20171025151647.b1a1d512.freebsd@edvax.de> User-Agent: Alpine 2.20 (LRH 67 2015-01-07) MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII; format=flowed X-KLMS-Rule-ID: 1 X-KLMS-Message-Action: clean X-KLMS-AntiSpam-Status: not scanned, disabled by settings X-KLMS-AntiSpam-Interceptor-Info: not scanned X-KLMS-AntiPhishing: Clean, 2017/10/24 14:12:17 X-KLMS-AntiVirus: Kaspersky Security 8.0 for Linux Mail Server, version 8.0.1.721, bases: 2017/10/25 08:02:00 #11146475 X-KLMS-AntiVirus-Status: Clean, skipped 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 17:25:54 -0000 On Wed, 25 Oct 2017, Polytropon wrote: > > % which echo > echo: shell built-in command. > > $ which echo > /bin/echo > > In such a case, what should "man echo" show? > A person of good will authoring the documentation would describe the difference. The problem with putting all the documentation for several score of shell commands in a single page is not for commands such as "echo" which are easy to search for on the builtins man page, but commands such as "if" which are quite a chore to search for. I don't advocate a change in policy, but I wouldn't ridicule proponents in favor of a change. In any case, it is disengenuous to suggest to someone that they write the pages, given that there is no chance that such pages would be included in the distribution. daniel feenberg