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What do the numbers in a man page mean?

As in the "(1)" in git-svn(1)

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marked as duplicate by Gilles, Michael Mrozek♦ Mar 21 '11 at 22:23

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Manpages are arranged into sections:

  1. General user commands
  2. System calls
  3. Standard library functions
  4. Special files
  5. File formats
  6. Games
  7. Conventions and operations
  8. System administration commands
  9. Kernel interfaces

(These have changed around a bit over the years, and on some systems you may in particular notice sections 4 and 5 swapped.) There may also be subsections, especially on System V-derived systems (3x, 3curses, etc.)

Some systems also have sections like l (local) and n (new). Tcl/Tk manpages in particular like to install in section n, since many of them conflict with standard commands and functions.

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