If you like man trivia (and why else would you be reading this?) you could check out the top comment at <a href="https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/405783/why-does-man-print-gimme-gimme-gimme-at-0030" rel="nofollow">https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/405783/why-does-man...</a><p>(discussed at <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27994194">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27994194</a>)
> (... less common section numbers)<p>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.
The POSIX standard manual pages for the utilities can be found here:<p><a href="https://pubs.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/9799919799/idx/xcu.html" rel="nofollow">https://pubs.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/9799919799/idx/xcu.htm...</a><p>These would all be in section 1, if I am correct.
Interestingly, the section doesn't actually have to start with a number. TCL man pages use the 'n' section and 'man' resolves them just fine despite the ambiguity. Conversely, manpage names can also start with numbers, although this is rare (I found only one such example: man 30-systemd-environment-d-generator)
I looked up what the numbers mean a couple of times, but always forget it immediately
Step 1: Read `man man`<p>Step 2: Feel the urge to write an article about that
I admire people who do that.<p>Writing down what you learn cements knowledge, and sharing what you write might help someone else.
Is there a man man man article that will explain how to read man man?
Confession. I think I haven't read manpages since stackoverflow and certainly not since LLMs.<p>Perhaps the modern version of "man" should be a program you can talk to.
It's called Claude. Or Gemini-cli. Or any other agent capable of running man.<p>"Hey <agent>, use `man` to help answer these questions about grep"
Please no. I want to read the manual without having to talk to anything.
i have made llms read manpages, it is great lol