On Sun, Nov 24, 2024, at 10:08 AM, Andreas Kähäri wrote: > On Sun, Nov 24, 2024 at 09:31:42AM -0500, Greg Wooledge wrote: >> Similar cases exist elsewhere within the man page. For example, if you >> search for $! or $$ you will not find the section that documents them. >> You would have to know that $! is a "Special Parameter", and then search >> for Special Parameter to find it -- and even then, what you find is just >> a raw ! with no $ in front of it. (My patch to clarify this was >> rejected. It doesn't help that POSIX documents this exactly the same >> way, with just # and ! and ? rather than $# and $! and $? being shown.) > > I don't agree that the special parameters should be written as $! etc. > since those are their _values_ when used in the shell (exactness is a > virtue in a manual).
The strings "($*)", "($@)", "($#)", "($?)", "($-)", "($$)", "($!)", "($0)", and "($_, an underscore)" were added to doc/bash.1 last month [1]. The same strings, with the variations "($-, a hyphen.)" and "($_, an underscore.)", have been in doc/bashref.texi for eleven years [2]. [1] https://git.savannah.gnu.org/cgit/bash.git/commit/?h=devel&id=9d1eb43fdd363137dd687bc411b14ab4946f939c [2] https://git.savannah.gnu.org/cgit/bash.git/commit/?h=devel&id=8aaae10d7aad1addfafa9857f4616051f143f477 -- vq
