Xref: utzoo comp.sources.d:3759 news.software.b:2318
Newsgroups: comp.sources.d,news.software.b
Path: utzoo!henry
From: henry@utzoo.uucp (Henry Spencer)
Subject: Re: man pages - what goes where?
Message-ID: <1989Jun19.181502.2655@utzoo.uucp>
Organization: U of Toronto Zoology
References: <1989Jun19.021419.1512@telly.on.ca>
Date: Mon, 19 Jun 89 18:15:02 GMT

In article <1989Jun19.021419.1512@telly.on.ca> evan@telly.on.ca (Evan Leibovitch) writes:
>Specifically, I'm talking about the fact that some source distributions
>describe their executables under section 1 (elm, compress, cnews, conf,
>kermit, etc...). Yet others choose to put similar information in section 8
>(Bnews, smail) and a straggler or two likes yet something else such as
>cookie(6).

Historically, 1 was for commands that users might run, 6 was for games,
8 was for administration.  The boundaries here were kind of fuzzy -- what
about programs that users might run for administrative purposes?  C News
puts programs never intended to be run by humans (daemons and such) in 8,
and human-run programs in 1.
-- 
You *can* understand sendmail, |     Henry Spencer at U of Toronto Zoology
but it's not worth it. -Collyer| uunet!attcan!utzoo!henry henry@zoo.toronto.edu