man3/intro.3

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.\" 2007-10-23 mtk, Nearly a complete rewrite of the earlier page.
.TH INTRO 3 2017-09-15 "Linux" "Linux Programmer's Manual"
.SH NAME
intro \- introduction to library functions
.SH DESCRIPTION
Section 3 of the manual describes all library functions excluding the library
functions (system call wrappers) described in Section 2,
which implement system calls.
.PP
Many of the functions described in the section are part of the
Standard C Library
.RI ( libc ).
Some functions are part of other libraries (e.g.,
the math library,
.IR libm ,
or the real-time library,
.IR librt )
in which case the manual page will indicate the linker
option needed to link against the required library
(e.g.,
.I \-lm
and
.IR \-lrt ,
respectively,
for the aforementioned libraries).
.PP
In some cases,
the programmer must define a feature test macro in order to obtain
the declaration of a function from the header file specified
in the man page SYNOPSIS section.
(Where required, these feature test macros must be defined before including
.I any
header files.)
In such cases, the required macro is described in the man page.
For further information on feature test macros, see
.BR feature_test_macros (7).
.\"
.\" There
.\" are various function groups which can be identified by a letter which
.\" is appended to the chapter number:
.\" .IP (3C)
.\" These functions, the functions from chapter 2 and from chapter 3S are
.\" contained in the C standard library libc, which will be used by
.\" .BR cc (1)
.\" by default.
.\" .IP (3S)
.\" These functions are parts of the
.\" .BR stdio (3)
.\" library.  They are contained in the standard C library libc.
.\" .IP (3M)
.\" These functions are contained in the arithmetic library libm.  They are
.\" used by the
.\" .BR f77 (1)
.\" FORTRAN compiler by default, but not by the
.\" .BR cc (1)
.\" C compiler, which needs the option \fI\-lm\fP.
.\" .IP (3F)
.\" These functions are part of the FORTRAN library libF77.  There are no
.\" special compiler flags needed to use these functions.
.\" .IP (3X)
.\" Various special libraries.  The manual pages documenting their functions
.\" specify the library names.
.SH CONFORMING TO
Certain terms and abbreviations are used to indicate UNIX variants
and standards to which calls in this section conform.
See
.BR standards (7).
.SH NOTES
.SS Authors and copyright conditions
Look at the header of the manual page source for the author(s) and copyright
conditions.
Note that these can be different from page to page!
.SH SEE ALSO
.BR intro (2),
.BR errno (3),
.BR capabilities (7),
.BR credentials (7),
.BR environ (7),
.BR feature_test_macros (7),
.BR libc (7),
.BR math_error (7),
.BR path_resolution (7),
.BR pthreads (7),
.BR signal (7),
.BR standards (7)