4 ms·

Why do people on this website use "make(1)" instead of "make" in writing? And I know it's in the man pages but what is this number even for?

SifJar 7y ago
The number is the "section" of the manual: https://www.kernel.org/doc/man-pages/ https://www.kernel.org/doc/man-pages/ My guess is make(1) is to distinguish from make(1p) - http://man7.org/linux/man-pages/man1/make.1p.html http://man7.org/linux/man-pages/man1/make.1p.html
- masklinn 7y ago
  > My guess is make(1) is to distinguish from make(1p) - http://man7.org/linux/man-pages/man1/make.1p.html http://man7.org/linux/man-pages/man1/make.1p.html Or just reflexively included just in case, because of commonly encountering potentially ambiguous situations that you just disambiguate by default, even for non-ambiguous situations.
rustyfe 7y ago
The (1) in make(1) corresponds to which section of the manual[1] make is in. This is useful in some cases to distinguish between things that might be in multiple sections like printf(1) the user command and printf(3) the C library function. When everyone knows what's being discussed, I think it's mostly people trying to give a shibboleth that they've read the fine manual. [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Man_page#Manual_sections https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Man_page#Manual_sections
nocman 7y ago
As the previous replies stated, the "1" is the section of the manual the page you are requesting occurs in. If you have trouble remembering what the sections are, I recommend running "man man" in the terminal. The section numbers are explained near the beginning.
- jjgreen 7y ago
  Irix (IIRC) used to respond to the argumentless command "man" with the supremely snotty "appropo what", which made me laugh out loud the first time I saw it
IshKebab 7y ago
They're showing off their geek creds. "I know what man page sections are" essentially. There's absolutely no practical reason to use it in a comment.
drfuchs 7y ago
Unlike “ls” and “cp”, “make” is a real word, so to help us human readers parse the document’s prose, adding the section number in parentheses gives our brains a quick clue as to what’s going on.
astrobe_ 7y ago
I guess to avoid the confusion with the verb and make the sentence more pleasant to read. I think the more usual way to deal with that type of problem is to use italics.

SifJar 7y ago

The number is the "section" of the manual: https://www.kernel.org/doc/man-pages/ https://www.kernel.org/doc/man-pages/ My guess is make(1) is to distinguish from make(1p) - http://man7.org/linux/man-pages/man1/make.1p.html http://man7.org/linux/man-pages/man1/make.1p.html

masklinn 7y ago
> My guess is make(1) is to distinguish from make(1p) - http://man7.org/linux/man-pages/man1/make.1p.html http://man7.org/linux/man-pages/man1/make.1p.html Or just reflexively included just in case, because of commonly encountering potentially ambiguous situations that you just disambiguate by default, even for non-ambiguous situations.

rustyfe 7y ago

The (1) in make(1) corresponds to which section of the manual[1] make is in. This is useful in some cases to distinguish between things that might be in multiple sections like printf(1) the user command and printf(3) the C library function. When everyone knows what's being discussed, I think it's mostly people trying to give a shibboleth that they've read the fine manual. [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Man_page#Manual_sections https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Man_page#Manual_sections

nocman 7y ago

As the previous replies stated, the "1" is the section of the manual the page you are requesting occurs in. If you have trouble remembering what the sections are, I recommend running "man man" in the terminal. The section numbers are explained near the beginning.

jjgreen 7y ago
Irix (IIRC) used to respond to the argumentless command "man" with the supremely snotty "appropo what", which made me laugh out loud the first time I saw it

IshKebab 7y ago

They're showing off their geek creds. "I know what man page sections are" essentially. There's absolutely no practical reason to use it in a comment.

drfuchs 7y ago

Unlike “ls” and “cp”, “make” is a real word, so to help us human readers parse the document’s prose, adding the section number in parentheses gives our brains a quick clue as to what’s going on.

astrobe_ 7y ago

I guess to avoid the confusion with the verb and make the sentence more pleasant to read. I think the more usual way to deal with that type of problem is to use italics.