Re: man sections

[Cameron Simpson]

On 23Dec2014 08:52, Paul Cartwright  wrote:
> On 12/23/2014 08:29 AM, Ed Greshko wrote:
> > FWIW,  "man man" does tell one the purpose of each of the sections.
>   1   Executable programs or shell commands
>   2   System calls (functions provided by the kernel)
>   3   Library calls (functions within program libraries)
>   4   Special files (usually found in /dev)
>   5   File formats and conventions eg /etc/passwd
>   6   Games
>   7   Miscellaneous  (including  macro  packages  and
>
> conventions), e.g.
>           man(7), groff(7)
>       8   System administration commands (usually only for root)
>       9   Kernel routines [Non standard]
>
> see again I get confused...
>
> man 7 groff
> No manual entry for groff in section 7

Groff is a command. These are in sections 1, 6 and 8 (commands, games, admin 
commands).
> so 7 miscellaneous does not include groff(7).. or am I misreading it...

7 is for stuff that more or less doesn't fit in the other categories.
> and just for grins, try
> man awk... 2032 lines... and the example shows:

You're complaining that awk has documentation?
> EXAMPLES
>       Print and sort the login names of all users:
>            BEGIN     { FS = ":" }
>                 { print $1 | "sort" }
>
> um, so, how does awk work there??

That is an example awk program. I would expect to feed it the /etc/passwd file 
as input.

Cheers,
Cameron Simpson

It's hard to make a man understand something when his livelihood depends
on him not understanding it. - Upton Sinclair