Unix manpages

[namtx]

Here’s a look at the most commonly used sections of the manpages for FreeBSD and Linux systems:

• Section 1: General Commands
• Section 2: System Calls
• Section 3: C Library Functions
• Section 4: Special Files

So Section 1 is for general commands (a.k.a. shell commands). If I wanted to refer you to the manual page for the find command I would write it like this: find(1). This tells you that there is a manual page for find in section 1 of the manpages.

If I wanted to refer to the manual page for the getpid system call I would write it like this: getpid(2). This tells you that there is a manual page for getpid in section 2 of the manpages.