Re: the Linux man-pages as an educational tool

Alejandro Colomar <[email protected]> Sun, 2 Aug 2026 13:47:50 +0200
Newsgroups gmane.linux.man,gmane.comp.lib.gnulib.bugs,gmane.comp.lib.glibc.alpha
Message-ID <am8tWQ4m2AsEudA_@devuan>
--punvlblsc5eczsoc
Content-Type: text/plain; protected-headers=v1; charset=utf-8
Content-Disposition: inline
Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable
From: Alejandro Colomar <[email protected]>
To: Collin Funk <[email protected]>
Cc: "G. Branden Robinson" <[email protected]>, 
	Paul Eggert <[email protected]>, [email protected], bug-gnulib-mXXj517/[email protected], 
	libc-alpha-9JcytcrH/[email protected]
Subject: Re: the Linux man-pages as an educational tool
Message-ID: <am8tWQ4m2AsEudA_@devuan>
References: <15288158.RDIVbhacDa@cagnes>
 <am56ZBzNM5J07AUa@devuan>
 <f3f50282-8f40-449b-87c2-5df85fbfdc4e-764C0pRuGfqVc3sceRu5cw@public.gmane.org>
 <am6CnOddgaM10pry@devuan>
 <20260802000833.zpu27l7ibvrbouna@illithid>
 <am6PkypxYg-Fq4Iz@devuan>
 <[email protected]>
 <am6X32HkGdm2xTd7@devuan>
 <[email protected]>
 <am8nRpn_xeWoHxho@devuan>
MIME-Version: 1.0
In-Reply-To: <am8nRpn_xeWoHxho@devuan>

Hi Collin,

> > Date: 2026-08-01 18:49:03-0700
> > From: Collin Funk <[email protected]>
> >
> > But myself and likely many others who have commented on this thread do
> > not agree that strings.h is a bad name. Or that general memory related
> > functions, which are used on strings a large portion of the time, need a
> > separate header.

BTW, this typo reminds me that we have some more evidence.  <strings.h>
has existed for a long time in parallel to <string.h>, and some
functions are documented as being provided by it instead of by
<string.h>.  An example is strcasecmp(3).

In practice, both <string.h> and <strings.h> provide strcasecmp(3):

	alx@devuan:~/tmp$ cat s.c=20
	#include <string.h>

	int
	main(void)
	{
		void *p =3D strcasecmp;
	}
	alx@devuan:~/tmp$ gcc -Wall -Wextra -Wno-unused s.c=20
	alx@devuan:~/tmp$=20

Every now and then, people wonder about this non-standard header file,
but no cats were harmed by that.  Claiming that <memory.h> would be much
different is unreasonable, IMO.


Cheers,
Alex

--=20
<https://www.alejandro-colomar.es>

--punvlblsc5eczsoc
Content-Type: application/pgp-signature; name="signature.asc"

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
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=8AHW
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

--punvlblsc5eczsoc--