What do the numbers mean?

[aliaseer]

At looking at the man pages (online and locally) for several commands I started noticing that there is always some sort of specification in the format <cmd(#)>.
For example:

chmod(1)
chmod(2)
cp(1)
symlink(7)
stat(2)
stat(5)

(I got some of those from here but I also see them in the SEE ALSO section of my man pages).

What do the numbers mean? Why do some commands have different numerical options (is that the correct term for this?)?

[Franklin52]

Here's some information about this issue:

Manual page (Unix) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Regards

[devils casper]

This is from manual of man command.

The table below shows the section numbers of the manual followed by the types of pages they contain.

1 Executable programs or shell commands
2 System calls (functions provided by the kernel)
3 Library calls (functions within program libraries)
4 Special files (usually found in /dev)
5 File formats and conventions eg /etc/passwd
6 Games
7 Miscellaneous (including macro packages and conventions), e.g. man(7), groff(7)
8 System administration commands (usually only for root)
9 Kernel routines [Non standard]

man <section number> <command>

[aliaseer]

Awsome. I can now start reading more into this.
Thanks.

[CodeRoot]

man [section number] <command>

[devils casper]

man [section number] <command>

I am not getting the meaning of your post? Is there anything wrong?

[CodeRoot]

I am not getting the meaning of your post? Is there anything wrong?

man [section number] <command>

[arg] => optional argument
<arg> => required argument

(standard command syntax)


=> 'razz'

No -- nothing is really wrong -- just razzing you...

[devils casper]

Okk ! I get it now.
I didn't even imagine that someone will look into code so keenly.