man page

n. A page from the Unix Programmer's Manual, documenting one of Unix's many
commands, system calls, library subroutines, device driver interfaces, file
formats, games, macro packages, or maintenance utilities. By extension, the
term man page may be used to refer to documentation of any kind, under any
system, though it is most likely to be confined to short on-line references.
As mentioned in Chapter11, Other Lexicon Conventions , there is a standard
syntax for referring to man page entries: the phrase foo(n) refers to the
page for foo in chapter n of the manual, where chapter 1 is user commands,
chapter 2 is system calls, etc. The man page format is beloved, or berated,
for having the same sort of pithy utility as the rest of Unix. Man pages
tend to be written as very compact, concise descriptions which are complete
but not forgiving of the lazy or careless reader. Their stylized format does
a good job of summarizing the essentials: invocation syntax, options, basic
functionality. While such a concise reference is perfect for the
do-one-thing-and-do-it-well tools which are favored by the Unix philosophy,
it admittedly breaks down when applied to a command which is itself a major
subsystem.

