Re: Procedure Management Procedures

[James Rich <james@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Tue, 28 Aug 2001 Seth.D.Shields@blum.com wrote:

> > One of the most useful things we have done is to create on
> line documentation similar to UNIX man pages.
>
> For those of us who are UNIX illiterate, what is a UNIX man page?

man pages are a collection of documentation in a standard format sorted by
topic.  The man page for getenv() (chosen because of the recent discussion
here) looks like this:


GETENV(3)           Linux Programmer's Manual           GETENV(3)

NAME
       getenv - get an environment variable

SYNOPSIS
       #include <stdlib.h>

       char *getenv(const char *name);

DESCRIPTION
       The  getenv() function searches the environment list for a
       string that matches the string pointed to  by  name.   The
       strings are of the form name = value.

RETURN VALUE
       The  getenv()  function  returns a pointer to the value in
       the environment, or NULL if there is no match.

CONFORMING TO
       SVID 3, POSIX, BSD 4.3, ISO 9899

SEE ALSO
       putenv(3), setenv(3), unsetenv(3), environ(5)

GNU                         1993-04-03                  GETENV(3)


This is the format we use to document our procedures.

James Rich
james@eaerich.com