Man Page Tutorial (man magic)

Sections

man pages are divided into 10 sections:

(1) User commands
examples: man, ls, cd, find
(2) System Calls - functions provided by the kernel
examples: read, write, ioctl, fcntl
(3) Library Functions - functions within system libraries
examples: stdio, fopen
(4) Device Files - usually found in /dev
examples: console, pcmcia_core, hda1
(5) File Formats
examples: passwd, inetd.conf, lilo.conf, named.conf
(6) Games
(7) Miscellaneous - macro languages, protocols, conventions, standards
examples: socket, udp, tcp, ascii
(8) System Administration Commands
examples: ifconfig, smbd, named, rpm
(9) Kernel Routines
examples: kfree, kmalloc, printk
(n) New - extra packages often put their man pages here
examples: tcl/tk commands and functions

Some words, like 'open' or 'socket', have pages in multiple sections. By default, man chooses the lower numbered sections. The solution is to explicitly specify the section, like this:

man SECTION PAGE

Searching for Man Pages

whatis WORD
	List all man pages containing exact match of *WORD* in their title. Note that searching for a singular word (e.g. host) will not find anything containing its plural (hosts).

apropos STRING
	List all man pages containing *STRING*, as a part of another word or by itself, in the title or in the description. If you get too many results, try whatis.

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