Subject: Re: What information belongs into man pages?
To: Roland Illig <rillig@NetBSD.org>
From: Greg Troxel <gdt@ir.bbn.com>
List: tech-userlevel
Date: 10/19/2006 09:01:19
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  Now the questions are:
  - What target audience do we have for the man pages?
    - C language lawyers (in that case it wouldn't be necessary)
    - Casual C programmers (who may find the information useful)
    - Beginners (to whom the information is essential)

  - Do we want to provide such programmer-friendly documentation that
  tries to prevent bugs, increasing the code quality?

perhaps, but if man pages become too large, they become less useful.

  - Or are the man pages just references, and we don't care much about
  their quality?

I think we care, but the current one isn't wrong.


In this case, the existing man page has a CAVEAT which could be
improved, but I'd be terser

CAVEATS
     The argument to isspace() must be EOF or a valid value for an
     unsigned char; otherwise, the result is undefined.  Thus, it is
     incorrect to pass a (signed) char as the argument.

=2D-=20

    Greg Troxel <gdt@ir.bbn.com>

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