[Tfug] Another poser

[Brian Murphy]

Bexley Hall wrote:
> Here's a silly poser -- undoubtedly with no "right"
> answer! But, maybe, some "rational" answers??
> 
> By convention, *NIX commands are referenced with
> the manual section appended parenthetically.  In
> some cases, set in a different typeface, etc.
> 
> But, how should commands for which man pages do not
> *exist* be referenced?  I.e., commands whose man
> pages have not YET been written or are otherwise
> unavailable?
> 
> E.g., for years, NetBSD (and all *BSD's?) were
> lacking a tar(1) man page.  Of course, since tar(1)
> is so ubiquitous (in the *NIX world), it didn't
> take a rocket scientist to realize that you
> *still* would refer to it as "tar(1)" -- on
> the assumption that *most* Eunices would place
> it in the "1" section of the manual and, thus,
> *BSD would undoubtedly follow.
<snip>
> [I suspect this issue has only been encountered
> by folks writing documentation?]
> 


Well, if the man page hasn't been written yet there is little use to 
reference it.

The numbers are conventional.  Here is an excerpt from the man page howto:

Section The human readable name
    1    User commands that may be started by everyone.
    2    System calls, that is, functions provided by the kernel.
    3    Subroutines, that is, library functions.
    4    Devices, that is, special files in the /dev directory.
    5    File format descriptions, e.g. /etc/passwd.
    6    Games, self-explanatory.
    7    Miscellaneous, e.g. macro packages, conventions.
    8    System administration tools that only root can execute.
    9    Another (Linux specific) place for kernel routine documentation.
    n    (Deprecated) New documentation, that may be moved to a more 
appropriate section.
    o    (Deprecated) Old documentation, that may be kept for a grace 
period.
    l    (Deprecated) Local documentation referring to this particular 
system.


As the author of the command and/or documentation you have some freedom 
to choose where it fits because like I said, it's not set in stone.

Brian