Re: Omitted convention in man-pages - conventions for writing Linux man pages

Re: Omitted convention in man-pages - conventions for writing Linux man pages

[Michael Kerrisk (man-pages)]

Hello Mike,

On Sat, 22 Aug 2020 at 15:40, Mike P <4mikepalmer@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Reported by Mike Palmer, Waterville, Co. Kerry, Ireland   Sat Aug 22 14:32:29 IST 2020
>
> The file
> man7.org/linux/man-pages/man7/man-pages.7.html
> does not contain a reference to the correct usage of the asterisk.
> Many man pages do contain asterisks as well as strings such as [-].
> Though the asterisk is used in CLI commands often as a wildcard,
> it is not clear how any such use may be legitimate in commands
> defined by a given man page.
> Does the asterisk in a specific man page serve as a universal
> wildcard, or does it have a scope specific to the man page?

I'm not sure whether it's possible to write a general guideline. I
guess I'd be interested to see a few more concrete examples of
variations in usage before trying to.

> An example of where the asterisk is used without explanation
> is in STTY(1).

At the top of that page it says: "An * marks non-POSIX settings." Does
that not cover it? Or have a I missed something?

Thanks,

Michael



-- 
Michael Kerrisk
Linux man-pages maintainer; http://www.kernel.org/doc/man-pages/
Linux/UNIX System Programming Training: http://man7.org/training/