The manual sections are traditionally defined as follows:
1 Commands
Those commands that can be executed by the user from
within a shell.
1P Posix Commands
2 System calls
Those functions which must be performed by the kernel.
3 Library calls
Most of the libc functions, such as qsort(3).
3P Posix Functions
4 Special files
Files found in /dev.
5 File formats and conventions
The format for /etc/passwd and other human-readable
files.
6 Games
7 Conventions and miscellaneous
A description of the standard file system layout, net-
work protocols, ASCII and other character codes, this
man page, and other things.
8 System management commands
Commands like mount(8), many of which only root can
execute.
9 Kernel routines
This is an obsolete manual section. Once it was
thought a good idea to document the Linux kernel here,
but in fact very little has been documented, and the
documentation that exists is outdated already. There
are better sources of information for kernel developers.
