For example, when I run man ioctl the page says IOCTL(2) at the top. What does that mean? Is there an IOCTL(1)? And how does one navigate between these?
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352answers:
3
+32
A:
It's the man page section. From memory, section 1 is user programs, 2 is system calls, and 3 is standard C library calls, and 5 is file formats.
Wikipedia has the full explanation here.
Paul Tomblin
2009-02-25 20:21:13
+1. This puzzled me for years. ... ( ere long WikiPedia existed of course )
OscarRyz
2009-02-25 20:51:08
The man page section was very useful in days of printed manuals. I still have the 4.1 BSD printed manuals in my office. (The section number also helps you know when you're calling into the kernel, versus making a library call.)
Craig S
2009-02-25 21:58:13
@Craig - also useful for disambiguating, as shown in eduffy's answer.
Paul Tomblin
2009-02-25 22:06:26
+20
A:
That's the man page section number. For example
man printf
(should) Give you section 1, printf the bash command, while
man 3 printf
gives you the C function printf.
eduffy
2009-02-25 20:22:20