diff --git a/docs/user/Doxyfile b/docs/user/Doxyfile
index 80359b2ef2..fa43259da9 100644
--- a/docs/user/Doxyfile
+++ b/docs/user/Doxyfile
@@ -948,6 +948,7 @@ INPUT                  = . \
                          ../../headers/os/support \
                          ../../headers/os/translation \
                          ../../headers/posix/syslog.h \
+                         ../../headers/posix/unistd.h \
                          ../../src/kits/game/GameProducer.h
 
 # This tag can be used to specify the character encoding of the source files
diff --git a/docs/user/posix/_libroot.dox b/docs/user/posix/_libroot.dox
index 7a21c1278f..41f9227b75 100644
--- a/docs/user/posix/_libroot.dox
+++ b/docs/user/posix/_libroot.dox
@@ -7,7 +7,7 @@
  */
 
 /*!
-\page libroot C, POSIX, GNU and BSD functions
+\defgroup libroot C, POSIX, GNU and BSD functions
 
 Haiku implements a standard library containing the standard functions from C
 (https://www.iso.org/standard/29237.html) and POSIX
diff --git a/docs/user/posix/unistd.dox b/docs/user/posix/unistd.dox
new file mode 100644
index 0000000000..a827e16abf
--- /dev/null
+++ b/docs/user/posix/unistd.dox
@@ -0,0 +1,48 @@
+/*
+ * Copyright 2023 Haiku, Inc. All rights reserved.
+ * Distributed under the terms of the MIT License.
+ *
+ * Authors:
+ *		Adrien Destugues, pulkomandy@pulkomandy.tk
+ *
+ * Corresponds to:
+ *		headers/posix/unistd.h	hrev56953
+ */
+
+/*!
+	\file unistd.h
+	\ingroup libroot
+	\brief Standard symbolic constants and types
+*/
+
+/*!
+	\fn int ioctl(int fd, unsigned long op, void* argument, size_t size)
+	\brief Send a control command to a device through a file descriptor
+
+	ioctls are usually sent to file descriptors corresponding to files in the devfs filesystem
+	(mounted in /dev). It allows sending commands to devices that wouldn't fit the usual flow of
+	the read and write operations.
+
+	The action to perform is identified by the "op" parameter. Each driver can implement its own
+	custom operations as needed, depending on the device being controlled. There are also a few
+	standard ones implemented by most drivers.
+
+	In the standard UNIX version of this function, there is support for only one extra argument,
+	which can be either an integer, or a pointer, either pointing to some data to send to the
+	driver, or some buffer to receive a response. In most UNIX systems, further details about the
+	operation are encoded in the "op" parameter, with bits indicating the direction and size of
+	the buffer.
+
+	In BeOS and Haiku, the allocation of "op" values is done freely in each driver, and no bits are
+	reserved for such use. Instead, a 4th argument is allowed, and can be used to indicate the
+	buffer size. There is no need to encode the transfer direction, as this can be agreed between
+	the calling application and the driver.
+
+	Both the 3rd and 4th parameters are optional. In C++, this is done using C++ function default
+	arguments and causes no problems. However, the C language has no such feature. Therefore, the
+	C implementation is a macro implementing a similar behavior.
+
+	To avoid these divergences between implementations of ioctl, portable applications should
+	consider using the newly standardized posix_devctl function from POSIX 1.2024, which is
+	equivalent to the BeOS/Haiku implementation of ioctl and also has an explicit size parameter.
+*/
diff --git a/headers/posix/unistd.h b/headers/posix/unistd.h
index f541ca07ff..f02ada8aa9 100644
--- a/headers/posix/unistd.h
+++ b/headers/posix/unistd.h
@@ -362,6 +362,17 @@ extern int		symlinkat(const char *toPath, int fd, const char *symlinkPath);
 extern int      ftruncate(int fd, off_t newSize);
 extern int      truncate(const char *path, off_t newSize);
 
+/* We want the 3rd and 4th arguments to ioctl to be optional, but we can't use varargs because
+ * then we have no way to know if the optional arguments are present, and calling va_next is
+ * undefined behavior (it may or may not work depending on the calling convention).
+ *
+ * In C++, we implement ioctl using default function arguments, but in C this isn't possible.
+ * So, the C implementation is done as vararg macro that use preprocessor magic to call the
+ * 4 argument function and fill in the omitted arguments.
+ *
+ * The legacy ioctl function in C with vararg arguments is still provided for ABI compatibility
+ * with existing applications, but should not be used anymore by newly compiled code.
+ */
 extern int		__ioctl(int fd, ulong cmd, void* argument, size_t size);
 #ifndef __cplusplus
 extern int		ioctl(int fd, unsigned long op, ...);