Hello Mike, On Sat, 22 Aug 2020 at 15:40, Mike P <4mikepalmer@xxxxxxxxx> wrote: > > Reported by Mike Palmer, Waterville, Co. Kerry, Ireland Sat Aug 22 14:32:29 IST 2020 > > The file > man7.org/linux/man-pages/man7/man-pages.7.html > does not contain a reference to the correct usage of the asterisk. > Many man pages do contain asterisks as well as strings such as [-]. > Though the asterisk is used in CLI commands often as a wildcard, > it is not clear how any such use may be legitimate in commands > defined by a given man page. > Does the asterisk in a specific man page serve as a universal > wildcard, or does it have a scope specific to the man page? I'm not sure whether it's possible to write a general guideline. I guess I'd be interested to see a few more concrete examples of variations in usage before trying to. > An example of where the asterisk is used without explanation > is in STTY(1). At the top of that page it says: "An * marks non-POSIX settings." Does that not cover it? Or have a I missed something? Thanks, Michael -- Michael Kerrisk Linux man-pages maintainer; http://www.kernel.org/doc/man-pages/ Linux/UNIX System Programming Training: http://man7.org/training/
