tcpdump filter syntax issue

Perhaps not a linux specific issue, but I thought I'd start here.

According to the tcpdump man page:

ether proto protocol

True if the packet is of ether type protocol. Protocol
can be a number or one of the names ip, ip6, arp, rarp,
atalk, aarp, decnet, sca, lat, mopdl, moprc, iso, stp,
ipx, or netbeui. Note these identifiers are also key-
words and must be escaped via backslash (\).

So according to that, this should work:

[root@orbital tmp]# tcpdump -n -vvv ether proto \stp
tcpdump: parse error

Two slashes gets me a higher level error:

[root@orbital tmp]# tcpdump -n -vvv ether proto \\stp
tcpdump: unknown ether proto 'stp'

Two slashes with another protocol seems to work:

[root@orbital tmp]# tcpdump -n -vvv ether proto \\arp
tcpdump: listening on eth0
16:10:07.551223 arp who-has 192.168.65.2 tell 192.168.65.10
16:10:07.551351 arp who-has 192.168.65.3 tell 192.168.65.10
16:10:08.544725 arp who-has 192.168.65.2 tell 192.168.65.10
16:10:08.544728 arp who-has 192.168.65.3 tell 192.168.65.10
16:10:09.544721 arp who-has 192.168.65.2 tell 192.168.65.10
16:10:09.544727 arp who-has 192.168.65.3 tell 192.168.65.10

6 packets received by filter
0 packets dropped by kernel

However this _does_ work:

[root@orbital tmp]# tcpdump -n -vvv stp
tcpdump: listening on eth0
16:04:18.343589 802.1d config 8000.00:05:32:a3:9b:46.8026 root
8000.00:05:32:a3:9b:46 pathcost 0 age 0 max 20 hello 2 fdelay 15
16:04:20.346351 802.1d config 8000.00:05:32:a3:9b:46.8026 root
8000.00:05:32:a3:9b:46 pathcost 0 age 0 max 20 hello 2 fdelay 15
16:04:22.349545 802.1d config 8000.00:05:32:a3:9b:46.8026 root
8000.00:05:32:a3:9b:46 pathcost 0 age 0 max 20 hello 2 fdelay 15

3 packets received by filter
0 packets dropped by kernel

Is the man page out of date for the actual filter syntax ? And why do I
need two slashes ? Any insight would be appreciated. Thanks.

--
Brandon Applegate - CCIE 10273
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