Re: wrong section in manpages

[Martin Schulze <joey@infodrom.org>]

Uwe Zeisberger wrote:
> during learning how to write manpages, I looked over a few installed
> ones on my machine, and in addition to having learned some things, I saw
> some errors in the .TH lines.
> 
> For example in make(1) (surprisingly in the package `make'):
> 
>         $ zgrep ^\\.TH /usr/share/man/man1/make.1.gz
>         .TH MAKE 1L "22 August 1989" "GNU" "LOCAL USER COMMANDS"
> 
> The second argument to .TH is the section number. I don't know, what the
> suffix `L' should mean, but in any case the section in the name of the
> manpage and the section specified in the file differ.
> 
> pwck(8) (in package `passwd') is still worse:
> 
>         $ zgrep ^\\.TH /usr/share/man/man8/pwck.8.gz
>         .TH PWCK 1
> 
> Here the two sections differ completely. Moreover the 3rd to 5th

This usually happens when the Debian section of manpages differs from
the upstream section.  This is clearly a bug in the Debian package.
(The wrong section in the .TH line, that is).

> arguments to .TH are missing - however I think they are not very
> important.

They are not too important.  If they are missing, they are missing.
They usually denote the date when the manpage was written or updated
and the overall section it belongs to.  If you are bored, you may want
to contact the upstream author with proper suggestions about these
fields.

Regards,

	Joey

-- 
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