A request to segregate man pages for shell built-ins
Daniel Feenberg
feenberg at nber.org
Wed Oct 25 17:25:54 UTC 2017
On Wed, 25 Oct 2017, Polytropon wrote:
>
> % which echo
> echo: shell built-in command.
>
> $ which echo
> /bin/echo
>
> In such a case, what should "man echo" show?
>
A person of good will authoring the documentation would describe the
difference.
The problem with putting all the documentation for several score of shell
commands in a single page is not for commands such as "echo" which are
easy to search for on the builtins man page, but commands such as "if"
which are quite a chore to search for. I don't advocate a change in
policy, but I wouldn't ridicule proponents in favor of a change.
In any case, it is disengenuous to suggest to someone that they write the
pages, given that there is no chance that such pages would be included in
the distribution.
daniel feenberg
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