.ad l/.ad b

[Alejandro Colomar (man-pages)]

Hi, Branden and Michael!

I've seen these in shmctl.2, and didn't know what they mean.
groff(7) wasn't very helpful.

[
.SH SYNOPSIS
.nf
.ad l
.B #include <sys/shm.h>
.PP
.BI "int shmctl(int " shmid ", int " cmd ", struct shmid_ds *" buf );
.ad b
.fi
]

What are those '.ad X' and do we really need them?

I found some other pages that use it:

[
.../linux/man-pages$ grep -rn '^\.ad b' man?
man1/localedef.1:60:.ad b
man2/setsid.2:40:.ad b
man2/acct.2:41:.ad b
man2/shmctl.2:55:.ad b
man2/shmget.2:50:.ad b
]

groff(7) related info:

[
       .ad       Begin line adjustment for output lines in current
                 adjust mode.
       .ad c     Start line adjustment in mode c (c=l,r,c,b,n).
]

But what does each mode mean?  I couldn't find anything about them in 
the manual page.


Thanks,

Alex


--
Alejandro Colomar
Linux man-pages comaintainer; https://www.kernel.org/doc/man-pages/
http://www.alejandro-colomar.es/