MAN pages authoritativeness

[John Nielsen]

On Tuesday 02 May 2006 06:18, Pietro Cerutti wrote:
> I just read the InformIT article on OpenBSD 3.9, available here:
> http://www.informit.com/articles/article.asp?p=468055&f1=rss&rl=1
>
> They state that the MAN pages are authoritative in OpenBSD, "... In
> OpenBSD, the UNIX manual pages are considered authoritative. If a
> program or function call does not behave exactly as the manual
> describes, this is considered a bug...."
>
> I was just curious to know if this was also true in FreeBSD.

In my experience, yes.  AFAIK having detailed, accurate man pages for 
everything in the base system has always been a design goal.  And if I find 
something that doesn't work like the manpage describes, then I submit a bug 
report.  Sometimes the bug is with the manpage, though. :)

JN