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I often see number-suffixed command or system call names in man pages or other documentation, for example, splice(2). Although, some publications don't include the numbers, for example, Splice on Wikipedia.

I never found an explanation of what the numbers stand for and don't even know where/how to begin a search.

  1. What do these numbers mean?
  2. What is the range for these numbers?
  3. Why are they suffixed to function and command names?
  4. Which communities use those numbers?
Mogsdad
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Cetin Sert
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  • I'm voting to close this question as off-topic because it belongs on the Unix & Linux site – Kristoffer Sall-Storgaard Apr 29 '15 at 07:24
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    Does this answer your question? [What does the number in parentheses shown after Unix command names in manpages mean?](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/62936/what-does-the-number-in-parentheses-shown-after-unix-command-names-in-manpages-m) – Caleb Stanford Feb 21 '23 at 18:17

1 Answers1

12

These numbers refer to Unix man sections.

1   Commands available to users
2   Unix and C system calls
3   C library routines for C programs
4   Special file names
5   File formats and conventions for files used by Unix
6   Games
7   Word processing packages
8   System administration commands and procedures

You can specify a section number with the man command by just listing the section number:

man 1 somecommand

would look for somecommand in section 1 of the man pages.

Wikipedia has some additional information on this as does this page on how to use man pages.

Levon
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