Shell confusion

[Bryn M. Reeves]

On Fri, 2009-03-13 at 15:41 +0000, Bryn M. Reeves wrote:
> On Fri, 2009-03-13 at 15:09 +0000, Dave Bolt IT Solutions wrote:
> > Thanks for the explanation of the use of - in the su command.
> > I checked the man pages for su, (why did you put su(1)), and found the 
> 
> Because the man pages have traditionally been organised into several
> sections. The number in parentheses indicates the section of the manual
> that the page is in (this is important since for e.g. there are library
> calls that have the same name as commands, e.g. /usr/bin/printf is
> documented in printf(1) but the printf call in the stdio library is
> documented in printf(3)).
> 
> The conventional man sections are:
> 
>        1      User Commands
> 
>        2      System Calls
> 
>        3      C Library Functions
> 
>        4      Devices and Special Files
> 
>        5      File Formats and Conventions
> 
>        6      Games et. Al.
> 
>        7      Miscellanea
> 
>        8      System Administration tools and Deamons
> 
> See "man man" for more information.

Doh. Forgot to mention that to select a section you just put the number
as the first argument to man. E.g:

$ man 1 printf -> /usr/bin/printf's man page
$ man 3 printf -> printf() call in stdio.h's man page

Bryn.