Re: Which manual is the authoritative source?

[Andreas Kusalananda Kähäri]

On Wed, Feb 09, 2022 at 11:47:23AM +0500, Akbarkhon Variskhanov wrote:
> https://www.gnu.org/software/bash/manual/
> 
> This page lists several formats of the manual for bash.
> 
> PDF and HTML files, for example, differ in many ways. My question is: which
> one should be considered authoritative and ultimate?
> 
> Thank you.

The manual most relevant to you is the one you get from "man bash" on
your system.  That manual will correspond to precisely the version
of the shell installed on your system.  The manual called "The GNU
Bash Reference Manual" is also available on your system and may be
accessed with "info bash".  If there are discrepancies, you may consider
reporting these as bugs (if they are still present in the latest
release, I suppose).

There is not much use in looking up a manual on the web if that manual
does not correspond to the version of the shell that you are currently
using, unless you want to compare the text of the manuals between
releases (which could also be done using Git).

As both the reference manual and the "man" manual are authored by the
bash maintainer, both are authoritative.  Since the shell is still being
developed, none are ultimate.


-- 
Andreas (Kusalananda) Kähäri
SciLifeLab, NBIS, ICM
Uppsala University, Sweden

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