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1.1     ! root        1: .na
        !             2: .bl  15
        !             3: .tr |
        !             4: .in 0
        !             5: .ce
        !             6: UNIX PROGRAMMER'S MANUAL
        !             7: 
        !             8: .ce
        !             9: Third Edition
        !            10: 
        !            11: 
        !            12: 
        !            13: .ce 3
        !            14: K. Thompson
        !            15: 
        !            16: D. M. Ritchie
        !            17: 
        !            18: 
        !            19: 
        !            20: 
        !            21: .ce
        !            22: February, 1973
        !            23: .sp 15
        !            24: .ce 7
        !            25: Copyright 8c9 1972
        !            26: Bell Telephone Laboratories, Inc.
        !            27: 
        !            28: No part of this document may be reproduced,
        !            29: or distributed outside the Laboratories, without
        !            30: the written permission of Bell Telephone Laboratories.
        !            31: .bp
        !            32: .fo ''- % -''
        !            33: .ro
        !            34: .bl 2
        !            35: .ce 2
        !            36: PREFACE
        !            37: to the Third Edition
        !            38: 
        !            39: 
        !            40: In the months since the last appearance of this manual,
        !            41: many changes have occurred
        !            42: both in the system itself and in the way it is
        !            43: used.
        !            44: 
        !            45: Perhaps most obviously,
        !            46: there have been additions, deletions, and modifications
        !            47: to the system and its software.
        !            48: It is these changes, of course, that
        !            49: caused the appearance of this revised manual.
        !            50: 
        !            51: Second, the number of people spending
        !            52: an appreciable amount
        !            53: of time writing UNIX software has increased.
        !            54: Credit is due
        !            55: to L.|L.|Cherry, M.|D.|McIlroy, L.|E.|McMahon, R.|Morris,
        !            56: J.|F.|Ossanna,
        !            57: and E.|N.|Pinson
        !            58: for their contributions.
        !            59: 
        !            60: Finally, the number of UNIX installations
        !            61: has grown to 16, with more expected.
        !            62: None of these has exactly the same complement
        !            63: of hardware or software.
        !            64: Therefore, at any particular installation,
        !            65: it is quite possible that this manual will
        !            66: give inappropriate information.
        !            67: .a
        !            68: 
        !            69: In particular,
        !            70: .ul 3
        !            71: any system which uses a PDP-11/20
        !            72: processor will not include all the software described
        !            73: herein, nor will the software behave the same way.
        !            74: The second, or even the first, edition
        !            75: of this manual is likely to be more
        !            76: appropriate.
        !            77: 
        !            78: Besides additions, deletions, and
        !            79: modifications to the writeups in each section,
        !            80: this manual differs from its predecessors
        !            81: in two ways:
        !            82: all the commands used for system maintenance
        !            83: and not intended for normal users have been moved
        !            84: to a new section VIII;
        !            85: and there is a new "How to Get Started"
        !            86: chapter that gives some elementary facts
        !            87: and many pointers to other sections.
        !            88: .bp
        !            89: .bl 2
        !            90: .ce
        !            91: INTRODUCTION TO THIS MANUAL
        !            92: 
        !            93: 
        !            94: This manual gives descriptions of the publicly available
        !            95: features of UNIX.
        !            96: It provides neither a general
        !            97: overview (see "The UNIX Time-sharing System" for that)
        !            98: nor details of the implementation of the system (which
        !            99: remain to be disclosed).
        !           100: 
        !           101: Within the area it surveys, this manual attempts
        !           102: to be as complete and timely as possible.
        !           103: A conscious
        !           104: decision was made to describe each program
        !           105: in exactly the state it was in at the time
        !           106: its manual section
        !           107: was prepared.
        !           108: In particular, the
        !           109: desire to describe something as it should be, not as it is,
        !           110: was resisted.
        !           111: Inevitably, this means that
        !           112: many sections will soon be out of date.
        !           113: (The rate of
        !           114: change of the system is so great that a dismayingly
        !           115: large number of early sections
        !           116: had to be modified while the rest were being written.
        !           117: The unbounded effort required to stay up-to-date
        !           118: is best indicated by the fact that several of the programs
        !           119: described were written specifically to aid in preparation
        !           120: of this manual!)
        !           121: 
        !           122: This manual is divided into
        !           123: eight sections:
        !           124: 
        !           125:    I.    Commands
        !           126:    II.   System calls
        !           127:    III.  Subroutines
        !           128:    IV.   Special files
        !           129:    V.    File formats
        !           130:    VI.   User-maintained programs
        !           131:    VII.  Miscellaneous
        !           132:    VIII. Maintenance
        !           133: 
        !           134: Commands are programs intended to be invoked directly by
        !           135: the user, in contradistinction to subroutines, which are
        !           136: intended to be called by the user's programs.
        !           137: Commands generally reside in directory /bin____ (for
        !           138: bin___ary programs).  This directory is searched automatically
        !           139: by the command line interpreter.  Some programs
        !           140: classified as commands are located elsewhere; this
        !           141: fact is indicated in the appropriate sections.
        !           142: 
        !           143: System calls are entries into the UNIX supervisor.
        !           144: In assembly language, they are coded with the use
        !           145: of the opcode "sys", a synonym for the
        !           146: trap____ instruction.
        !           147: 
        !           148: A small assortment
        !           149: of subroutines is available;
        !           150: they are described in section III.
        !           151: The binary form of most of them is kept in
        !           152: the system library /usr/lib/liba.a.
        !           153: 
        !           154: The special files section IV discusses the characteristics of
        !           155: each system "file" which actually refers to an I/O device.
        !           156: Unlike previous editions, the names in this
        !           157: section refer to the DEC device names for the
        !           158: hardware,
        !           159: instead of the neames of
        !           160: the special files themselves.
        !           161: 
        !           162: The file formats section V documents the structure of particular
        !           163: kinds of files; for example, the form of the output of the loader and
        !           164: assembler is given.  Excluded are files used by only one command,
        !           165: for example the assembler's intermediate files.
        !           166: 
        !           167: User-maintained programs (section VI) are not considered part
        !           168: of the UNIX system, and the principal reason for
        !           169: listing them is to indicate their existence without
        !           170: necessarily giving a complete description.
        !           171: The author should be consulted for information.
        !           172: 
        !           173: The miscellaneous section (VII) gathers odds and ends.
        !           174: 
        !           175: Section VIII discusses commands which are not intended
        !           176: for use by the ordinary user,
        !           177: in some cases because they disclose information
        !           178: in which he is presumably not interested,
        !           179: and in others because they perform
        !           180: privileged functions.
        !           181: 
        !           182: 
        !           183: Each section consists of a number of independent
        !           184: entries of a page or so each.
        !           185: The name of the entry is in the upper corners of its pages,
        !           186: its preparation date in the upper middle.
        !           187: Entries within each section are
        !           188: alphabetized.
        !           189: The page numbers of each entry start at 1.
        !           190: (The earlier hope for frequent, partial
        !           191: updates of the manual is clearly in vain, but
        !           192: in any event it is not feasible to
        !           193: maintain consecutive page numbering in a document
        !           194: like this.)
        !           195: 
        !           196: All entries have a common format.
        !           197: .sp
        !           198: .in 5
        !           199: The name____ section repeats the entry name and gives
        !           200: a very short description of its purpose.
        !           201: 
        !           202: The synopsis________ summarizes the use of the
        !           203: program being described.
        !           204: A few conventions are used, particularly in the
        !           205: Commands section:
        !           206: 
        !           207: .in 8
        !           208: Underlined words are considered literals, and
        !           209: are typed just as they appear.
        !           210: 
        !           211: Square brackets ([]) around an argument
        !           212: indicate that the argument is optional.
        !           213: When an argument is given as "name", it always
        !           214: refers to a file name.
        !           215: 
        !           216: Ellipses "..." are used to show that the previous argument-prototype
        !           217: may be repeated.
        !           218: 
        !           219: A final convention is used by the commands themselves.
        !           220: An argument beginning with a minus sign "-"
        !           221: is often taken to mean some sort of flag argument
        !           222: even if it appears in a position where a file name
        !           223: could appear.  Therefore, it is unwise to have files
        !           224: whose names begin with "-".
        !           225: 
        !           226: .in 5
        !           227: The description___________ section discusses in detail the subject at hand.
        !           228: 
        !           229: The files_____ section gives the names of files which are
        !           230: built into the program.
        !           231: 
        !           232: A see___ also____ section gives pointers to related information.
        !           233: 
        !           234: A diagnostics___________
        !           235: section discusses
        !           236: the diagnostics that may be produced.
        !           237: This section tends to be as terse
        !           238: as the diagnostics themselves.
        !           239: 
        !           240: The bugs____ section gives
        !           241: known bugs and sometimes deficiencies.
        !           242: Occasionally also the suggested fix is
        !           243: described.
        !           244: 
        !           245: .in 0
        !           246: Previous edition of this manual had
        !           247: an owner_____ section, which has been dropped from this
        !           248: edition because the "owners" of many routines became
        !           249: fairly hard to pin down.
        !           250: The major contributors to UNIX,
        !           251: (cast in order of appearance)
        !           252: together with their login names and most notable contributions,
        !           253: are
        !           254: 
        !           255:    ken    K. Thompson          (UNIX, many commands)
        !           256:    dmr    D. M. Ritchie                (many commands, as, ld, C)
        !           257:    jfo    J. F. Ossanna                (roff, nroff)
        !           258:    doug   M. D. McIlroy                (tmg, m6)
        !           259:    rhm    R. Morris            (dc, much of library)
        !           260:    lem    L. E. McMahon                (cref)
        !           261:    llc    L. L. Cherry         (form, fed, salloc)
        !           262:    csr    C. S. Roberts                (tss)
        !           263:    enp    E. N. Pinson         (proof)
        !           264: 
        !           265: At the beginning of this document is a table of contents,
        !           266: organized by section and alphabetically within each section.
        !           267: There is also a permuted index derived from the table of contents.
        !           268: Within each index entry, the title
        !           269: of the writeup to which
        !           270: it refers is followed by the appropriate section number in parentheses.
        !           271: This fact is important because there is considerable
        !           272: name duplication among the sections,
        !           273: arising principally from commands which
        !           274: exist only to exercise a particular system call.
        !           275: 
        !           276: 
        !           277: This manual was prepared using the UNIX text
        !           278: editor ed__ and the formatting program roff____.
        !           279: 
        !           280: The assistance of R. Morris is gratefully acknowledged.

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