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Path: utzoo!mnetor!seismo!cmcl2!phri!roy
From: roy@phri.UUCP (Roy Smith)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.wizards
Subject: Re: Convention for naming manual pages: .l vs .1
Message-ID: <2606@phri.UUCP>
Date: Sun, 8-Mar-87 15:11:28 EST
Article-I.D.: phri.2606
Posted: Sun Mar  8 15:11:28 1987
Date-Received: Mon, 9-Mar-87 19:19:12 EST
References: <4762@brl-adm.ARPA>
Reply-To: roy@phri.UUCP (Roy Smith)
Organization: Public Health Research Inst. (NY, NY)
Lines: 25
Summary: Why the manX/command.X redundancy in the first place?

In article <4762@brl-adm.ARPA> rbj@icst-cmr.arpa (Root Boy Jim) writes:
> We put all our nonstandard manual sections in /usr/man/man9!!!
> [...] Of course, you can't put both foo.1 and foo.5 into section 9

	I never did understand why you had to have the suffix on the file
name match the last character of the man sub-directory.  When we upgraded
from 4.2 to 4.3, we had a hell of a time tracking down *all* the local
stuff and made a decision that as much as possible we were going to put all
the local stuff in separate directories from now on.  Thus, all the stuff
we added to /usr/man/manN should be moved to /usr/man/manl.  But, what to
do about terminfo.3 and terminfo.5?  Can't call them *both* terminfo.l, can
you?

	It seems to me that the most logical thing would be to have files
called /usr/man/manl/terminfo.3 and /usr/man/manl/terminfo.5; when you say
"man 3 terminfo", you get the former and when you say "man 5 terminfo" you
get the latter.  If you just say "man terminfo", you get one or the other,
depending on the usual search-path rules, which I forget offhand.  Can
anybody see any reason why this would be a Bad Thing?
-- 
Roy Smith, {allegra,cmcl2,philabs}!phri!roy
System Administrator, Public Health Research Institute
455 First Avenue, New York, NY 10016

"you can't spell deoxyribonucleic without unix!"