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> (... less common section numbers) One very important section number is 5 - it's for file formats. So if you forget the crontab format, you need to invoke `man 5 crontab` to read about it.
... because if you do `man crontab` you get section 1, which does not document the crontab fields.
Run `apropos . | grep "(3)"`; you'll be surprised how many libraries come with man pages for their functions (e.g; curl).
Now I wonder if there are any IDEs that can automatically dial into these man pages and pull up documentation for functions?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
... because if you do `man crontab` you get section 1, which does not document the crontab fields.
That is incredibly stupid. A documentation system designed by someone who doesn't understand how people use documentation. If man was designed by someone with any taste at all it would at least give you a menu to select (1) crontab command, (5) crontab file format. Maybe we need a rewrite in Rust to fix that.
> (... less common section numbers) One very important section number is 5 - it's for file formats. So if you forget the crontab format, you need to invoke `man 5 crontab` to read about it.
... because if you do `man crontab` you get section 1, which does not document the crontab fields.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
... because if you do `man crontab` you get section 1, which does not document the crontab fields.
That is incredibly stupid. A documentation system designed by someone who doesn't understand how people use documentation. If man was designed by someone with any taste at all it would at least give you a menu to select (1) crontab command, (5) crontab file format. Maybe we need a rewrite in Rust to fix that.
My goodness. Man was written on a paper teletype.
.\" Take this out and a Unix Daemon will dog your steps from now until
.\" the time_t's wrap around.
.Pp
You can tune a file system, but you cannot tune a fish.
If you like man trivia (and why else would you be reading this?) you could check out the top comment at https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/405783/why-does-man... (discussed at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27994194 )
Reading this makes me wonder if Easter eggs are ever appropriate for something as ubiquitous as man.
My favorite piece of man trivia is from the source of the tunefs BSD man page, which contains: .\" Take this out and a Unix Daemon will dog your steps from now until .\" the time_t's wrap around. .Pp You can tune a file system, but you cannot tune a fish. https://github.com/freebsd/freebsd-src/blob/main/sbin/tunefs...
Step 1: Read `man man` Step 2: Feel the urge to write an article about that