What do numbers mean in man?

Ken Lee klee at chico.pa.dec.com
Fri Dec 22 09:12:18 AEST 1989


In article <664 at nems.dt.navy.mil>, lumsdon at dtoa1.dt.navy.mil (Lumsdon) writes:
> At the bottom of man entries, the user is frequently referred to the
> man pages for other commands. Like this:
> rn(1), vi(3), ckermit(1)

These refer to sections of the UNIX manual:

1.  user commands
2.  system calls
3.  subroutines
4.  special files
5.  file formats and conventions
6.  games
7.  macro packages and language conventions
8.  system maintenance commands

Each section has an introduction, which you can read on-line by typing
"man # intro", where # is the section number.

Ken Lee
DEC Western Software Laboratory, Palo Alto, Calif.
Internet: klee at decwrl.dec.com
uucp: uunet!decwrl!klee



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