For English is not my native language, it is quite hard to read the informations in linux, so i cant get an easy start to linux now, something following are questions really obscured me for days:
--------------------
man kill

SYNOPSIS
kill [ -s signal | -p ] [ -a ] [ -- ] pid ...
kill -l [ signal ]
--------------------------
what does the symbol "|" mean in the "[ -s signal | -p ] " here ?
further more, how could i use the option "-p" with command "kill" ? i never successed with it.

finally, is there any rule to get the description of options? such as '-', '...', the meaning of terms with underline, the sequence in the synopsis, etc. I just cant find these relative guide in manual, so it will be very appreciate for your guidance about it!
thanks a lot!

Malc

unix help is ususally --help
but some bad programmers like whoever wrote "kill" don't write it that way for whatever idiotic reason.
also man pages can be just about anything and i have no idea what the "|" stands for.
the man page for Linux kill says
that man page you show is quite foreign to Linux

What distro are you using? It is a great help if you add it to your user profile.

In this case, I think that the | symbol means OR. You can use either -s or -p. My version of kill does not have a -p option, so I can't help you as to what it does.

This page may help you with understanding the man pages.

I hope this helps
--Ian

The pipe symbol indeed indicates OR. The '...' implies that multiple pids may be supplied (in general it indicates a repeat of the previous argument). Something between '[' and ']' is optional (so you don;t have to specify it). And the '-' indicates an option.

I also could not get '-p' to work, so possibly a mistake (recently there was an option for another command that nobody could get to work on this forum)

hi, FOO_BAR_FOO&IBALL,thank you very much for helps,
i guess my linux version is redhat 9,
dmesg--->
Linux version 2.4.20-8 (bhcompile@stripples.devel.redhat.com) (gcc version 3.2.2 20030222 (Red Hat Linux 3.2.2-5)) #

maybe it is an old version, anyway, thanks a lot!
i will try seeking help by --help instead of using "man", thats better!

hey, Wim Sturkenboom
, thanks a lot !

Can I suggest that you upgrade to Fedora Core 4 if you can get it?

It will make your life much easier, because RH9 is old so there is more software for FC4, and many of the bugs that you may encounter have already been fixed.

--Ian

there was a thread in lq about the meaning of underlined text in the man pages.
Sthg about th term being described / used somewhere else.
Anyway not very important.

You have discoverd kill, did you know of killall?

Next time please try a better title, ie. stating what the topic is