On 11/01/2014 at 10:18 PM, Carl Fink wrote: > When I wanted the options for umask, I typed 'man umask' and got the > man page for it as a C header diretive? (I'm not a C programmer, but > it seemed to be for C header files and came from section 2.) > > This is darn confusing for a new user. I have been around long > enough (slink) that I quickly realized it must be a Bash builtin and > found that man page, but how would a beginner know that? 'type umask' (followed by 'help umask' to avoid having to search through the entire bash man page) would be the usual approach, wouldn't it? There's an argument to be made that these commands are more obscure than they should be, but I think the solution to that would be to help publicize them better. Though I'll admit that I don't have any ideas for good ways to do so, just offhand. > Surely a symbolic link could be set up for umask as well as the > others (bg, eval, fg, read, etc.)? One could, but I don't think I'd say it would be a good idea, and although the Debian bash maintainers might disagree with me I don't think the odds of their adding such symlinks are very good. I don't like the idea of cluttering the man-page namespace that way. I might see an argument for adding a new manual section (i.e. a new /usr/share/man/manX/ number) to hold such symlinks to shell builtins and the like, but I don't really think they would belong in any of the existing sections that I'm aware of. > Should I file this as a bug against Sid? I know there's no chance it > will make it into Wheezy. If you think it should be done, sure, file a wishlist bug. The bug might end up WONTFIXed or left to sit unresolved indefinitely (and I'd probably argue that it should, if I wanted to bother following the suggestion to its bug report), but that's hardly a worse outcome than what happens if you don't file any bug at all. -- The Wanderer The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man. -- George Bernard Shaw
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