Date: Wed, 5 Nov 1997 16:24:14 +1030 From: Greg Lehey <grog@lemis.com> To: george <vagner@ti.com> Cc: FreeBSD Questions <questions@FreeBSD.org> Subject: Re: what does it mean Message-ID: <19971105162414.37943@lemis.com> In-Reply-To: <3460A9AB.B2F86504@ti.com>; from george on Wed, Nov 05, 1997 at 11:15:23AM -0600 References: <3460A9AB.B2F86504@ti.com>
next in thread | previous in thread | raw e-mail | index | archive | help
On Wed, Nov 05, 1997 at 11:15:23AM -0600, george wrote: > I sometimes see commands typed with a "(8)" next to them, such as > "rmuser (8)" > what does the (8) mean? It's the section of the manual in which you'll find it. 8 is system administration commands. Here's an appropriate section from the next edition of "The Complete FreeBSD": The most comprehensive documentation on FreeBSD is in the form of man pages. Nearly every program on the system comes with a short reference manual explaining the basic operation and various arguments. You can find the more important man pages starting on page 487 of this book. Online, you view the man pages with the command man. For example, to learn more about the command ls, type: $ man ls The resultant display corresponds to the man page for ls on page 890. The online manual is divided up into sections numbered: 1. User commands 2. System calls and error numbers 3. Functions in the C libraries 4. Device drivers 5. File formats 6. Games and other diversions 7. Miscellaneous information 8. System maintenance and operation commands 9. Kernel interface documentation In some cases, the same topic may appear in more than one section of the on- line manual. For example, there is a user command chmod and a system call chmod(). In this case, you can tell the man command which you want by specifying the section number: $ man 1 chmod This will display the manual page for the user command chmod. References to a particular section of the on-line manual are traditionally placed in parenthe- ses in written documentation. For example, chmod(1) refers to the user command chmod, and chmod(2) means the system call. Greg
Want to link to this message? Use this URL: <https://mail-archive.FreeBSD.org/cgi/mid.cgi?19971105162414.37943>