Unix manual page
<operating system> (Or "man page") A part of Unix's extensive on-line documentation. To read a manual page, type
man [-s<section>] <page>at a shell prompt, e.g. "man ftp" (the section number can usually be omitted). Pages are traditionally referred to using the notation "page(section)", e.g. ftp(1).
Under SunOS (which is fairly typical), Section 1 covers commands, 2 system calls, 3 C library routines, 4 devices and networks, 5 file formats, 6 games and demos, 7 miscellaneous, 8 system administration. Each section has an introduction which can be obtained with, e.g., "man 2 intro".
Manual pages are stored as nroff source files. Formatted versions are also usually cached.
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