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ID Category Severity Type Date Submitted Last Update
0000190 [1003.1(2008)/Issue 7] Shell and Utilities Editorial Enhancement Request 2009-12-03 02:27 2019-12-20 12:04
Reporter adelfino View Status public  
Assigned To ajosey
Priority normal Resolution Accepted As Marked  
Status Applied  
Name Andrés Delfino
Organization
User Reference
Section man utility
Page Number 2930
Line Number 96402 to 96404 (including both)
Interp Status ---
Final Accepted Text See Note: 0000320
Summary 0000190: Require environment variables and exit status information to man pages
Description I see the lack of information regarding the environment variables affecting a given utility, or the absence of exit status information as pretty irritating when writing shell scripts. Since UNIX utilities communicate with each other, I see the information about exit status really important.
Desired Action Change line 96402 to:

The man utility shall write information about each of the name operands. If name is the name of a standard utility, man at a minimum shall write a message describing the syntax used by the standard utility, its options, operands, environment variables affecting its execution, and its list of exit status codes.
Tags issue8
Attached Files

- Relationships

-  Notes
(0000319)
nick (manager)
2009-12-03 17:12

The current rationale (96479-96490) states:

      It is recognized that the man utility is only of minimal usefulness
      as specified. The opinion of the standard developers was strongly
      divided as to how much or how little information man should be
      required to provide. They considered, however, that the provision
      of some portable way of accessing documentation would aid user
      portability. The arguments against a fuller specification
      were:

      • Large quantities of documentation should not be required on
      a system that does not have excess disk space.

      • The current manual system does not present information in a
      manner that greatly aids user portability.

      • A ‘‘better help system’’ is currently an area in which
      vendors feel that they can add value to their POSIX implementations.

----
This situation is not believed to have changed since it was written (although
"a system that does not have excess disk space" might be better expressed as
"a system with limited disk space").
(0000320)
Don Cragun (manager)
2009-12-03 17:25

We agree that the changes are reasonable, but also believe that the man
utiity is not required on embedded systems.

Make the changes suggested in the Desired Action and also make the following changes:

Add man to the set of User Portability Extension utilities by:
1.  Add the UP mark to P2930, L96400,
2.  Add man to the list on P28, L1019-1020 in sorted order.
(0000889)
wpollock (reporter)
2011-07-09 01:37

With regard to note #319,

" • Large quantities of documentation should not be required on
      a system that does not have excess disk space.

      • The current manual system does not present information in a
      manner that greatly aids user portability.

      • A ‘‘better help system’’ is currently an area in which
      vendors feel that they can add value to their POSIX implementations.

----
This situation is not believed to have changed since it was written (although
"a system that does not have excess disk space" might be better expressed as
"a system with limited disk space"). "

I disagree with Nick's assessment of points 2 and 3. And maybe even point 1; the man page collections use up 150 MiB or so, and the shell utilities and system interfaces required by SUS probably take up less than 50 MiB. Even my phone has free space in excess of 2 GiB.

Since systems vary both between vendors and over time, finding the correct man pages on-line for a given system is not easy. So not fully specifying man pages and the man command does hurt portability, or at least hampers development.

In over 30 years, vendors have not come up with a better system. Just incompatible versions of man. (Even the Gnu "info" help system contains the same information as required by man, just in a different viewer and format. The same could be said for man pages in the web, so I don't see this as "different" or better.) It is time to stop crippling the man command, hoping vendors will come up with a far better system.

Having a standard man command utility, and standard contents for the man pages for utilities and system interfaces, would be a boon to users and developers; as the reported said, its lack is irritating.
(0000890)
user143
2011-07-10 04:20
edited on: 2011-07-10 04:28

http://www.free-iphone-apps.com [^]


- Issue History
Date Modified Username Field Change
2009-12-03 02:27 adelfino New Issue
2009-12-03 02:27 adelfino Status New => Under Review
2009-12-03 02:27 adelfino Assigned To => ajosey
2009-12-03 02:27 adelfino Name => Andrés Delfino
2009-12-03 02:27 adelfino Section => man utility
2009-12-03 02:27 adelfino Page Number => 2930
2009-12-03 02:27 adelfino Line Number => 96402 to 96404 (including both)
2009-12-03 17:12 nick Note Added: 0000319
2009-12-03 17:25 Don Cragun Interp Status => ---
2009-12-03 17:25 Don Cragun Note Added: 0000320
2009-12-03 17:25 Don Cragun Status Under Review => Resolved
2009-12-03 17:25 Don Cragun Resolution Open => Accepted As Marked
2009-12-03 17:27 Don Cragun Final Accepted Text => See Note: 0000320
2010-09-09 15:38 Don Cragun Tag Attached: tc1-2008
2010-09-09 15:39 Don Cragun Tag Detached: tc1-2008
2010-09-09 15:40 Don Cragun Tag Attached: issue8
2010-09-09 15:41 Don Cragun Resolution Accepted As Marked => Future Enhancement
2011-07-08 16:00 Don Cragun Resolution Future Enhancement => Accepted As Marked
2011-07-08 16:00 Don Cragun Summary Requiere environment variables and exit status information to man pages => Require environment variables and exit status information to man pages
2011-07-09 01:37 wpollock Note Added: 0000889
2011-07-10 04:20 user143 Note Added: 0000890
2011-07-10 04:24 user143 Note Edited: 0000890
2011-07-10 04:24 user143 Note Edited: 0000890
2011-07-10 04:25 user143 Note Edited: 0000890
2011-07-10 04:26 user143 Note Edited: 0000890
2011-07-10 04:27 user143 Note Edited: 0000890
2011-07-10 04:27 user143 Note Edited: 0000890
2011-07-10 04:27 user143 Note Edited: 0000890
2011-07-10 04:28 user143 Note Edited: 0000890
2019-12-20 12:04 geoffclare Status Resolved => Applied


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