The IRIX reference pages are available online through the man command. To view a reference page, use the man command at the shell prompt. For example, to see the reference page for diff, enter:
It is a good practice to print those reference pages you consistently use for reference and those you are likely to need before major administrative operations and keep them in a notebook of some kind.man diff
Each command, system file, or other system object is described on a separate page. The reference pages are divided into seven sections, as shown in Table 1-1. When referring to reference pages, this document follows a standard UNIX convention: the name of the command is followed by its section number in parentheses. For example, cc(1) refers to the cc reference page in Section 1.
Table 1-1 shows the reference page sections and the types of reference pages that they contain.
| Type of Reference Page | Section Number |
|---|---|
| General Commands | (1) |
| System Calls and Error Numbers | (2) |
| Library Subroutines | (3) |
| File Formats | (4) |
| Miscellaneous | (5) |
| Demos and Games | (6) |
| Special Files | (7) |