What does the ellipsis (...) mean in man pages

Question

I was reading the ln man page and came across the following SYNOPSIS.

ln [-Ffhinsv] source_file ... target_dir

What does symbol ... above mean?

You could have more than one *source-file*, e.g. `ln file1 file2 file3 target-dir/` — Basile Starynkevitch, Sep 21 '14 at 17:41
This ellipsis `(...)` is a general symbol used to show that there can be several types realted to previous mentioned type! — Am_I_Helpful, Sep 21 '14 at 17:42

score 20 · Accepted Answer · edited Nov 27 '14 at 12:17

That means a repeatable argument (source_file).

From man man:

The following conventions apply to the SYNOPSIS section and can be used
as a guide in other sections.

bold text          type exactly as shown.
italic text        replace with appropriate argument.
[-abc]             any or all arguments within [ ] are optional.
-a|-b              options delimited by | cannot be used together.

argument ...       argument is repeatable.
[expression] ...   entire expression within [ ] is repeatable.

According to the man page, calling ln like that will create links for all source files in the target directory e.g. ln file1 file2 file3 target-dir/.

What does the ellipsis (...) mean in man pages

1 Answers1