Submitted 1 year ago by echindod@programming.dev to linux@programming.dev
How do you discover system builtins for C functions? The man pages for the C functions on Linux are great, but only if you know the name of the function. Is there a way to see a detailed table of contents, or to browse Manpages on a Linux distro?
man -k xyz will search for any man page with xyz in it. You can also do man stdio to see what’s in the stdio library.
There’s also apropos which searches man pages on keyword.
I wrote a little script to browse Manpages: woman using fzf to create such a browser. Just run woman without arguments to see the full list.
I think you would need to change the variable sections='1,8,6,5,7' , so it access only specific Manpages. In example 1 stands for executable programs or shell commands. More about the sections in the DESCRIPTION of the man command itself: man man
On Debian, there is a package that displays system documentation including, if I remember correctly, man pages. I think I had to set up a local web server first.
On Archlinux at least, the glibc package includes info pages for C functions. Just type info libc at the command line, or use info inside emacs. There are hyperlinks in info pages, it’s a nicer interface than man pages.
lyda@programming.dev 1 year ago
ls /usr/share/man/man?/*will show you all the man pages on your system. I used to pick ones at random.Originally there were a number of manuals. Manual 1 had user commands. Manual 2 had system calls. Etc. You can type
man NUMBER introto read about that manual. You can also useman -korapproposbut I’ve also just used grep. These days they’re compressed so zgrep.