John Wildberger <wildberger-iRg7kjdsKiH3fQ9qLvQP4Q at public.gmane.org> writes:

On December 24, 2003 03:47 am, Peter L. Peres wrote:

...

Yes, you are right, up to a point. The manpages do not intend to tech you anything, they remind the programmer of all the details. For learning, use a book about programming or tutorials.

The man mmap consists of 192 lines. Your sample code has 8 lines. It makes all the difference between useful and useless. Why cannot the good people who write these man pages not include such gems?

Probably because Linux is a collaborative effort and most programmers (the people who best understand the functions needing documentation) usually prefer to program than write documentation. FWIW, the man pages of commercial versions of UNIX (such as Solaris), are often more complete than the corresponding Linux documentation. I find http://docs.sun.com useful in this regard. IIRC, The Open Group http://www.opengroup.org also has manual pages on-line. -- tim writer <tim-s/rLXaiAEBtBDgjK7y7TUQ at public.gmane.org> starnix inc. 905.771.0017 ext. 225 thornhill, ontario, canada http://www.starnix.com professional linux services & products -- The Toronto Linux Users Group. Meetings: http://tlug.ss.org TLUG requests: Linux topics, No HTML, wrap text below 80 columns How to UNSUBSCRIBE: http://tlug.ss.org/subscribe.shtml