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What do the numbers between parentheses stand for in the above commands, found within the LDAP galaxy?

I really cannot find anything out there, neither on the documentation, nor could I find any rationale for such an odd numbering style!

andreagalle
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1 Answers1

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These are very likely man sections:

   1   Executable programs or shell commands
   2   System calls (functions provided by the kernel)
   3   Library calls (functions within program libraries)
   4   Special files (usually found in /dev)
   5   File formats and conventions eg /etc/passwd
   6   Games
   7   Miscellaneous  (including  macro  packages  and  conventions), e.g.
       man(7), groff(7)
   8   System administration commands (usually only for root)
   9   Kernel routines [Non standard]
Tomek
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    .. and one rationale for *mentioning the sections* is: distinct manuals of otherwise identical name might exist in multiple sections, e.g. calling `man 1 postconf` will bring up the manual for the *program* while `man 5 postconf` will bring up the manual for the *configuration file format*. – anx Jul 22 '21 at 10:35