lmc@denelvx.UUCP (Lyle McElhaney) (12/09/84)
Can anybody tell me why the manual page files all have suffixes on them which define section [and subsection]? It seems to me that the suffix is somewhat redundant; the pathname to the page tells you what section; who cares what subsection it might be (except, perhaps, to build a complete hardcopy manual)? Adding a new subsection becomes a pain trying to get man and makewhatis and all the rest to understand the new letter. Trying to get makefiles for packages to understand where you want the page to go and then automatically updating the suffix is not fun (example: Larry Wall's beautiful job of packaging won't do the right thing, and I don't blame it a bit). Why shouldn't we do away with the suffixes?