manual page file names

[Lyle McElhaney]

Can anybody tell me why the manual page files all have suffixes on them
which define section [and subsection]?  It seems to me that the suffix is
somewhat redundant; the pathname to the page tells you what section; who
cares what subsection it might be (except, perhaps, to build a complete
hardcopy manual)?  Adding a new subsection becomes a pain trying to get
man and makewhatis and all the rest to understand the new letter.  Trying
to get makefiles for packages to understand where you want the page to go
and then automatically updating the suffix is not fun (example:  Larry
Wall's beautiful job of packaging won't do the right thing, and I don't
blame it a bit).

Why shouldn't we do away with the suffixes?