$ man ls

$ man 1 ls

But if you consult a hard-copy manual, you'll find it divided into actual sections according to the numbering scheme. Sometimes an entry in two different sections can have the same name. (For instance, chmod is both a command and a system call.) So you will sometimes see the name of a manual page followed by the section number in parentheses, as in ls(1).

There is one situation in which you will need the section number on the command line: when there are several manual pages for the same keyword (e.g., one for a command with that name and one for a system function with the same name). Suppose you want to look up a library call, but the man shows you the command because its default search order looks for the command first. In order to see the manual page for the library call, you need to give its section number.

Look near the top of a manual page. The first heading is NAME. Under it is a brief one-line description of the item. These descriptions can be valuable if you're not quite sure what you're looking for. Think of a word related to what you want, and specify it in an apropos command:

$ apropos edit

The previous command shows all the manual pages that have something to do with editing. It's a very simple algorithm: apropos simply prints out all the NAME lines that contain the string you ask for.

$ export MANPATH=/usr/man:/usr/local/man

The syntax is like PATH, described earlier in this chapter. Each two directories are separated by a colon. If your shell is csh or tcsh, you need to say:

$ setenv MANPATH /usr/man:/usr/local/man

Have you read some manual pages and still found yourself confused? They're not meant to be introductions to new topics. Get yourself a good beginner's book about Unix, and come back to manual pages gradually as you become more comfortable on the system; then they'll be irreplaceable.

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