Home/ Questions/Q 246737
In Process

The Archive Base Latest Questions

Editorial Team
  • 0
Asked: 2026-05-11T21:11:51+00:00

Possible Duplicate: Why do programs in Unix-like environments have numbers after their name? I

  • 0

Possible Duplicate:
Why do programs in Unix-like environments have numbers after their name?

I have seen several programs, such as GREP(3) and PING(8), listed in manpages. What is the significance of the digit in ()s?

Share

Leave an answer

You must login to add an answer.

Need An Account,

1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    If you run man man you will see the following information in the man page:

    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  conven‐
    tions), e.g. man(7), groff(7)
8   System administration commands (usually only for root)
9   Kernel routines [Non standard]

    Some names are associated with multiple entries, eg on my system ‘sleep’ has an entry in section 1 and an entry in section 3. You can specify the one you want with e.g. 

    man 3 sleep

    Sometimes I just guess with 

    man -a sleep

    which displays each entry associated with sleep in turn. I just go through them until I find the one I want. You can also try 

    man -k sleep

    to get a slightly bigger listing of pages involving the term ‘sleep’

    • 0