The man pages were broken into competent sections over multiple man pages. About 260 of them on this machine (not really: there is a change-tracking man page per release recently.) The 1st man page is a very compact index to them.

After that, each section is long but very searchable.

But I can see how many people never even noticed."Man page? what's that? what for?"

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Bratmon 36 minutes ago | parent [-]

But if every user is expected to read the entire manual cover-to-over before asking a question about a four-character operator, what's the point of dividing it into sections?

	▲	creer 25 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		I know you are not serious but let's go with it anyway. Since we have to be welcoming to newbies :-) Not expected to read cover to cover. Cover to cover would be the tutorial / course work. And even then in a layered language like perl 5, the later chapters only when needed. Layered: the language and coursework is written to add one layer of the language after the previous ones. So you can start writing things that do function after just the first layer. Expected to know it's there, navigate through it to find the operators or system variables and that you can search through the thing. There are ~260 man perl man pages on this computer - not expected to read them. For damn sure expected to use them. Do read one more section from top to bottom now and then if the thing is the one fundamental tool in your job!