Re^2: retiring gets(3)

[Charlie Geyer]

In article <4881 at boulder.Colorado.EDU> swarbric at tramp.Colorado.EDU 
(Frank Swarbrick) writes:
> It's a very legitimate question if you don't have much experience with 
> UNIX.  The only thing I use UNIX for is reading these messages, and I 
> have no idea what the '3' means, though I do know that it's not meant
> as a parameter.

It's which section of UNIX manual the documentation is in.  Some
commands/functions appear in more than one section of the manual.
There is a chmod(1), a chmod(2), and a chmod(3F), for example.
"man chmod" gets the first, "man 2 chmod" the second, and "man 3
chmod" the third.  The first is the UNIX command executed from the
shell, the second programs callable from C, and the third is callable
from FORTRAN.  (Of course there only one gets so "gets(3S)" is not
really necessary, but the UNIX manuals always refers to is that way.)