Man Sections

Typically you will see name synopsis description examples and see also sections all listed in capital letters for clarity.

Man sections. 1 executable programs or shell commands 2 system calls functions provided by the kernel 3 library calls functions within program libraries. The pages that appear in sections 1 5 and 8 of the man pages on a linux system. On the command line if you don t explicitly specify the section you get the first matching man page in the default section traversal order e g.

A man page consists several different sections organized with headings for each section such as name synopsis configuration description options exit status return value errors environment files versions conforming to notes bugs example authors and see also. For example man is the documentation of man found in section number 1. The table below shows the sectionnumbers of the manual followed by the types of pages they contain.

Section 1 includes all user command man pages section 2 all man pages for the system calls section 3 is for library functions etc. While reading documentation if you see a command name followed by a number in parentheses the number refers to one of these sections. The conventions described on this page may also be useful for authors writing man pages for other projects.

Using this option forces man to display all the manual pages that match name not just the first. The man macro set provides minimal rich text functions with directives for the title line section headers bold small or italic fonts paragraphs and adding reducing indentation. Man pages are grouped into sections.

Some commands may have documentation in more than one section so the numbers after the command name may direct you to the correct section to find a specific type of information. Section 1 user commands introduction section 2 system calls introduction section 3 library functions introduction section 4 special files introduction section 5 file formats introduction section 6 games introduction section 7 conventions and miscellany introduction section 8. Man pages are organized in sections e g.

The options and commands sections will often be present as well. This option overrides the mansect environment variable. Sections of the manual pagesthe manual sections are traditionally defined as follows.