Skip site navigation (1)Skip section navigation (2)
Date:      Wed, 25 Oct 2017 13:18:17 -0400 (EDT)
From:      Daniel Feenberg <feenberg@nber.org>
To:        Polytropon <freebsd@edvax.de>
Cc:        Manish Jain <bourne.identity@hotmail.com>, "freebsd-questions@freebsd.org" <freebsd-questions@freebsd.org>
Subject:   Re: A request to segregate man pages for shell built-ins
Message-ID:  <alpine.LRH.2.20.1710251305340.23739@sas1.nber.org>
In-Reply-To: <20171025151647.b1a1d512.freebsd@edvax.de>
References:  <VI1PR02MB1200817E0E2CDD2A2A42E1A5F6440@VI1PR02MB1200.eurprd02.prod.outlook.com> <20171025151647.b1a1d512.freebsd@edvax.de>

next in thread | previous in thread | raw e-mail | index | archive | help


On Wed, 25 Oct 2017, Polytropon wrote:

>
> 	% which echo
> 	echo: shell built-in command.
>
> 	$ which echo
> 	/bin/echo
>
> In such a case, what should "man echo" show?
>

A person of good will authoring the documentation would describe the 
difference.

The problem with putting all the documentation for several score of shell 
commands in a single page is not for commands such as "echo" which are 
easy to search for on the builtins man page, but commands such as "if" 
which are quite a chore to search for. I don't advocate a change in 
policy, but I wouldn't ridicule proponents in favor of a change.

In any case, it is disengenuous to suggest to someone that they write the 
pages, given that there is no chance that such pages would be included in 
the distribution.

daniel feenberg



Want to link to this message? Use this URL: <https://mail-archive.FreeBSD.org/cgi/mid.cgi?alpine.LRH.2.20.1710251305340.23739>