Re: misc/37981: shell builtin manpages are for csh(1) only...

[David Holland <dholland-bugs%netbsd.org@localhost>]

The following reply was made to PR misc/37981; it has been noted by GNATS.

From: David Holland <dholland-bugs%netbsd.org@localhost>
To: gnats-bugs%NetBSD.org@localhost
Cc: 
Subject: Re: misc/37981: shell builtin manpages are for csh(1) only...
Date: Sat, 9 Feb 2008 22:54:18 +0000

 On Fri, Feb 08, 2008 at 12:50:00PM +0000, Ephaeton%gmx.net@localhost wrote:
  > Shell builtins of the C Shell exist as their own manpages -- at
  > least linking the name of the builtin to the C shell manpage. I can
  > understand the historical and cultural background of BSD and csh,
  > yet still we do ship with alternative shells, among them two bourne
  > shells (sh, ksh).
  >
  > It's confusing to users of the latter shells (and actually I'm
  > writing this after being asked by a user) to see shell builtins
  > valid for their own shell (in this case "alias" for a ksh user) map
  > into manpages of a foreign shell.
 
 It is also confusing for users, particularly novices who may not
 understand the idea of different shells yet, to get nothing at all
 back when they type "man alias". So simply removing the links is not a
 solution.
 
 It is probably a good idea to have stub pages that point to the proper
 documentation for each shell, plus crossreferences for the same
 functionality in other shells (e.g. csh limit <-> sh ulimit).
 
 There should also be somewhere an explanation for why builtins are
 builtin and how the per-process state they affect is propagated; this
 stuff is not obvious to beginners, and if there's a good writeup of it
 already in the man pages I dunno where. Probably it should be
 addressed in intro(1), if only by pointing somewhere else.
 
 -- 
 David A. Holland
 dholland%netbsd.org@localhost