Description of problem: The man page and info pages for kill(1) list options that don't exist. The man page claims there are -a and -p options to kill(1). The info page claims there are -t/--table options which are synonyms for -l, it also claims kill supports --help and --version which it does not. However, the info page for kill appears to come from the coreutils package, while the man page for kill(1) appears to come from the util-linux package, as does the version of /bin/kill that we ship. (/usr/bin/kill is a symlink to /bin/kill). Running /bin/kill without arguments displays the following usage message: [user@foobar ~]$ kill kill: usage: kill [-s sigspec | -n signum | -sigspec] [pid | job]... or kill -l [sigspec] Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable): util-linux-2.12a-16.EL4-12 coreutils-5.2.1-31.2
There're two "kill" implementation. The man page kill(1) is correct, because it's for /bin/kill. the kill command from util-linux: $ /bin/kill usage: kill [ -s signal | -p ] [ -a ] pid ... kill -l [ signal ] bash buil-in command: $ help kill kill: kill [-s sigspec | -n signum | -sigspec] [pid | job]... or kill -l [sigspec] By the way, see kill(1) man page, there is note about it: "Most modern shells have a builtin kill function..."