Re: the Linux man-pages as an educational tool

[Collin Funk <collin.funk1@gmail.com>]

"G. Branden Robinson" <g.branden.robinson@gmail.com> writes:

> At 2026-08-03T01:08:32+0200, Arsen Arsenović wrote:
>> Alejandro Colomar <alx@kernel.org> writes:
>> > Most programmers can live in the safe bubble of <string.h>: those
>> > functions always require a string as input, and always provide a
>> > string as output.  Plain and simple.  It's difficult to write bugs
>> > when using those.
>> >
>> > That's the rationale.
>> 
>> I do not follow.
>> 
>> C has no namespaces, let alone qualified imports.
>
> That's true.
>
>> The name of a header providing some function is thus inconsequential.
>
> Then why not have one official big header file for the whole standard?
>
> #include <stdlibc.h>
>
> When you answer that to your own satisfaction, I suspect you'll have
> little trouble following Alex's argument.
>
> ...which doesn't mean you'll agree with it.

Plan 9 did this but with "#include <libc.h>" and it seems to have worked
fine.

I can't help but wonder of what happens in WG 14 rejects this
controversial, as obvious by this thread, change. Will the man-pages
changes be reverted? Or will we slowly watch them document personal
preferences instead of existing standards? After seeing weekly threads
about the prototype changes, I don't think it is an unreasonable
concern.

Collin