In Linux, how do I get man pages for C functions rather than for bash commands?
man 2 bind
You need a result from a different section of the manual! Man searches various sections for the information you want. As devnull lists below, the number indicates which section to search.
Incidentally, bind
is a system call, not a C library function. System calls (kernel calls) are in section 2 of the manual, library functions are in section 3.
man man
will tell you how to use the man command!
Saying man man
would tell you:
SYNOPSIS man ... [[section] page ...] ...
The table below shows the section numbers of the manual followed by the types of pages they contain. 1 Executable programs or shell commands 2 System calls (functions provided by the kernel) 3 Library calls (functions within program libraries) 4 Special files (usually found in /dev) 5 File formats and conventions eg /etc/passwd 6 Games 7 Miscellaneous (including macro packages and conventions), e.g. man(7), groff(7) 8 System administration commands (usually only for root) 9 Kernel routines [Non standard]
For example, man 1 printf
would show the manual for the printf
shell utility, while man 3 printf
would show the manual for printf()
in libc.
(When in doubt, say man -k foobar
. It will provide a list of man pages with foobar
as the regex.)