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Date:      Tue, 24 Apr 2001 20:01:45 -0500 (CDT)
From:      David Scheidt <dscheidt@tumbolia.com>
To:        Joseph Mallett <jmallett@newgold.net>
Cc:        chat@freebsd.org
Subject:   Re: ln(1) manpage
Message-ID:  <Pine.BSF.4.21.0104241946390.92436-100000@shell-2.enteract.com>
In-Reply-To: <Pine.BSO.4.33.0104241901540.19045-100000@aphex.newgold.net>

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On Tue, 24 Apr 2001, Joseph Mallett wrote:

:In situations such as ln(1), where there's a symlink that makes the
:command perform differently, as is the case with 'link', wouldn't it make

There's no symlink here.  

david@tumbolia ~ 501$ ls -li `which ln` `which link`
87315 -r-xr-xr-x  2 root  wheel  48544 Jan 21 21:30 /bin/link
87315 -r-xr-xr-x  2 root  wheel  48544 Jan 21 21:30 /bin/ln


:sense to move that information to link(1) manpage? Someone doing man ln
:probably doesn't care about what link does, and view versa, no? They
:could, however, have it in the '.SH SEE ALSO' section. That's what it's
:for, yeah?

It's the same binary.  The manual page for a binary is supposed to describe
its usage.  If its usage changes based on how it's called, that should be
documented.  I wouldn't know link(1) existed if it weren't documented in the
ln(1) man page.  (I don't think I've ever used it, so that wouldn't really
be a loss.)  In some cases -- like tin/rtin(1) -- the correct solution 
presents itself by reading the usage section.  I don't think it makes sense
to put the same command in the "SEE ALSO" section -- it's for things like
related commands, config files, system and library calls.

David


-- 
dscheidt@tumbolia.com
Bipedalism is only a fad.


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