> In article <uce-F79936.07363025072008@newsclstr02.news.prodigy.com>, > Gregory Weston <uce@splook.com> wrote: > > > It's interesting, though, that you've got it on a 10.4 machine while a > > machine I have that was delivered with 10.4 and then upgraded to Leopard > > doesn't have that version of the page. > > Maybe my memory is faulty there. I'm sure I remember using "chflags > hidden" on 10.4 machines, but I could be mistaken about the man page on > 10.4. > > > What's the date at the bottom of the chflags man page on your machine(s)? > > May 14, 2005
A possible explanation for the discrepancy (though the details seem to be different)...
The Leopard installer has a bug. If you do an "Upgrade" install, you end up with a mixture of Leopard and Tiger man pages. This has been discussed previously specifically with reference to the 'ls' man page.
My Mac Mini (still running 10.5.2) got Leopard via an Upgrade, and it is suffering from this mixture of man pages.
If I do a "man chflags" on my Mac Mini, I get the Tiger version of the man page, which does _not_ mention the hidden option. The date at the bottom of that page says May 2, 1995.
My MacBook Pro (on 10.5.4) got Leopard via migration from a cloned drive, and that method (or any other method other than "Upgrade") gives you the correct set of Leopard man pages.
If I do a "man chflags" on my MacBook Pro, I get the Leopard version of the man page, which describes the hidden option. The date at the bottom of that page says May 14, 2005.
You can check for the problem with the following command in Terminal:
ls /usr/share/man/man1/chflags*
If your computer was "Upgraded" to Leopard, it will list two files:
The 'man' command finds the chflags.1 file first, so it displays it. Unfortunately, that is the Tiger man page, not the Leopard one.
If your computer had Leopard installed any other way, it will list one file:
/usr/share/man/man1/chflags.1.gz
Leopard added lots of compressed man pages, but the "Upgrade" install method didn't delete the corresponding Tiger non-compressed man pages.
I've filed this as a bug report with Apple, and they have at least acknowledged they are looking at it. I expect that at some point one of the 10.5.x updates will delete all the old man pages that aren't supposed to be there any more.