man 3 switch

[suvayu ali]

2009/11/14 Patrick O'Callaghan <pocallaghan at gmail.com>:
> On Sat, 2009-11-14 at 12:16 -0600, Frank Cox wrote:
>> On Sat, 14 Nov 2009 11:43:53 -0600
>> Chris Adams wrote:
>>
>> > Would you expect to see individual man pages for "if", "?:", "void",
>> > etc.?
>>
>> Actually yes, I would.  Those are fundamental parts of the C language and
>> should have the same man documentation as the library functions.
>
> The C Language is not documented in the man pages. It has *never* been
> documented in the man pages in any version of Unix or Unix-related
> systems that I'm aware of in over 35 years of use. Section 3 states
> clearly that it documents "C Library Functions". Library functions are
> not part of the language. Moreover, IMHO documenting language keywords
> via man pages as they are traditionally understood would be next to
> useless. A language requires a reference manual, tutorials and examples.
> It does not require a man page on "if".
>

This is a bit OT from the thread, but since we are talking about
documentation for programming languages I thought I might as well ask.
When it comes to C libraries and and the C Language, I can refer to
the man and info pages.

But is their any such documentation for C++ and the STL on a GNU/linux
system? I always find myself going to the web for this, searching for
some online tutorial or references. Over time I have come to recognize
which sources to consider more reliable than others, but still any
documentation available on the system locally would be much more
helpful.

Any thoughts anyone?

-- 
Suvayu

Open source is the future. It sets us free.