MPE/iX Shell and Utilities Reference Manual, Vol 1

intro(1) MPE/iX Shell and Utilities intro(1)
NAME
intro — introduction to man pages
DESCRIPTION
A description of an individual topic (for example, a command) is loosely called the manual
page for that topic, even if it is actually several pages long. This is often abbreviated to man
page, as in: ‘‘Read the man page for ls.’’ This man page describes the parts of a man page
with examples taken from real
MPE/iX Shell and Utilities man pages. Any of these parts may
be omitted if they are irrelevant to the software being described.
When we refer to documentation in the manual, we usually give the topic followed by the
chapter that contains the topic. for example, if we say ‘‘See ls(1)’’, we mean that you should
look up ls in Chapter 1 of the Reference Manual. Since each chapter is in alphabetical order,
it is quite easy to find anything in this way.
Name
The NAME section provides the name of the command and a brief functional description.
Synopsis
In the man page for a command, the SYNOPSIS section provides a quick summary of the com-
mand’s format. For example, here is the synopsis of the ls command.
ls [–abcCdfFgilmnopqrRstux1][pathname ...]
The synopsis takes the form of a command line as you might type it into the system; it shows
what you can type in and the order in which you should do it. The parts that are enclosed in
square brackets are optional; you may omit them if you choose. Parts that are not enclosed in
square brackets must be present for the command to be correct.
The synopsis begins with the name of the command itself. In
MPE/iX
Shell and Utilities docu-
mentation, command names are always written in bold Courier font.
After the command name comes a list of options, if there are any. A typical MPE/iX Shell and
Utilities command option consists of a dash (–) followed by a single character, usually an
uppercase or lowercase letter. For example, you might have –l or –t. If you are going to
specify several options for the same command, you can put all the option characters after the
same dash; for example,
ls –l –t
ls –lt
ls –t –l
ls –tl
are all equivalent.
1-2 Commands and Utilities