How to use "man" effectively in the development of Linux

man is the system's manual pager.     

 

The table below shows the section numbers of the manual followed by the types of pages they contain.

       1   Executable programs or shell commands
       2   System calls (functions provided by the kernel)
       3   Library calls (functions within program libraries)
       4   Special files (usually found in /dev)
       5   File formats and conventions eg /etc/passwd
       6   Games
       7   Miscellaneous (including macro packages and conventions),
           e.g. man(7), groff(7)
       8   System administration commands (usually only for root)
       9   Kernel routines [Non standard]

 

If you don't install man(2/3), please run "sudo apt-get install manpages-dev".

 

man 2/3 is very useful, for example:

1) man 2 write

 

WRITE(2)                                                                  Linux Programmer's Manual                                                                 WRITE(2)

NAME
       write - write to a file descriptor

SYNOPSIS
       #include <unistd.h>

       ssize_t write(int fd, const void *buf, size_t count);

DESCRIPTION

       .......