This might be a silly question. but I was wandering a long time searching for this .but couldn't solve. For some functions I've seen (8) also. They are mostly seen on documentations. Could anyone please help.
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6http://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/3586/what-do-the-numbers-in-a-man-page-mean – Michael Sep 11 '15 at 05:12
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ahh it helps. thank you. – Laksith Sep 11 '15 at 05:17
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1Quick command man -a man – asio_guy Sep 11 '15 at 08:27
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@kkk thanks... It didn't come to my mind earlier. thankz again – Laksith Sep 14 '15 at 07:35
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Often in the manual man you will see numbers after the functions to distinguish which section of the manual the page comes from.
You can view malloc(3) by typeing man 3 malloc on a unix style terminal with the appropriate man pages installed.
These are not specific to the C language.
ilent2
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The man pages are divided into sections with different topics:
1 User Commands
2 System Calls
3 C Library Functions
4 Devices and Special Files
5 File Formats and Conventions
6 Games et. al.
7 Miscellanea
8 System Administration tools
man 2 open will look for open in system calls and tell you details about the Linux system call, while man 3 open will look for open in C Library Functions and tell you about the ANSI or POSIX specification of open.
See the difference here for example:
http://linux.die.net/man/2/open
http://linux.die.net/man/3/open
John Hammond
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thankz. sory I didn't get it clearly. So how do you enter it in the man pages.I mean how to enter it in the commandline "man malloc 3 " some other thing – Laksith Sep 11 '15 at 09:33