From f45a07b62cf3fe033d7ec5ced9ca8646cb8bc8f6 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: Michael Kerrisk Date: Tue, 23 Oct 2007 14:48:10 +0000 Subject: [PATCH] Added intro paragraph about section, plus a paragraph about exit status values. Move "user intro" text to NOTES. --- man1/intro.1 | 20 ++++++++++++++++++++ 1 file changed, 20 insertions(+) diff --git a/man1/intro.1 b/man1/intro.1 index 1e7d02f0d..b2088cddf 100644 --- a/man1/intro.1 +++ b/man1/intro.1 @@ -20,10 +20,30 @@ .\" Formatted or processed versions of this manual, if unaccompanied by .\" the source, must acknowledge the copyright and authors of this work. .\" +.\" 2007-10-23 mtk Added intro paragraph about section, plus a paragraph +.\" about exit status values. +.\" .TH INTRO 1 2002-08-06 "Linux" "Linux User's Manual" .SH NAME intro \- Introduction to user commands .SH DESCRIPTION +Section 1 of the manual describes user commands and tools, +for example, file manipulation tools, shells, compilers, +web browsers, file and image viewers and editors, and so on. + +All commands yield a status value on termination. +This value can be tested (e.g., in most shells the variable +.I $? +contains the status of the last executed command) +to see whether the command completed successfully. +A zero exit status is conventionally used to indicate success, +and a non-zero status means that the command was unsuccessful. +(Details of the exit status can be found in +.BR wait (2).) +A non-zero exit status can be in the range 1 to 255, and some commands +use different non-zero status values to indicate the reason why the +command failed. +.SH NOTES Linux is a flavor of Unix, and as a first approximation all user commands under Unix work precisely the same under Linux (and FreeBSD and lots of other Unix-like systems).