I see in a lot of documentation something like the following ...
fs.openSync(path, flags, [mode])
Synchronous open(2).
What is meant when someone references a method with a number in the parenthesis? Is this just referring to the function signature with 2 parameters in a dynamic language. What is the point of this?
It refers to the Unix man pages, and the number 2 refers to the section of the man pages.
At a Unix command prompt type: man open
Or to specify it more completely: man -S 2 open
The 2 section refers to Unix kernel functions, while the 3 section refers to C library functions.