1man(1) General Commands Manual man(1)
2
6 man - format and display the on-line manual pages
7
9 man [-acdDfFhkKtvVwW] [--path] [-m system] [-p string] [-C config_file]
10 [-M pathlist] [-P pager] [-B browser] [-H htmlpager] [-S section_list]
11 [section] name ...
12
15 man formats and displays the on-line manual pages. If you specify sec‐
16 tion, man only looks in that section of the manual. name is normally
17 the name of the manual page, which is typically the name of a command,
18 function, or file. However, if name contains a slash (/) then man
19 interprets it as a file specification, so that you can do man ./foo.5
20 or even man /cd/foo/bar.1.gz.
21 See below for a description of where man looks for the manual page
23 files.
24
27 The standard sections of the manual include:
28 1 User Commands
30 2 System Calls
32 3 C Library Functions
34 4 Devices and Special Files
36 5 File Formats and Conventions
38 6 Games et. Al.
40 7 Miscellanea
42 8 System Administration tools and Daemons
44 Distributions customize the manual section to their specifics, which
46 often include additional sections.
47
50 -C config_file
51 Specify the configuration file to use; the default is
52 /etc/man.config. (See man.config(5).)
53 -M path
55 Specify the list of directories to search for man pages. Sepa‐
56 rate the directories with colons. An empty list is the same as
57 not specifying -M at all. See SEARCH PATH FOR MANUAL PAGES.
58 -P pager
60 Specify which pager to use. This option overrides the MANPAGER
61 environment variable, which in turn overrides the PAGER vari‐
62 able. By default, man uses /usr/bin/less -is.
63 -B Specify which browser to use on HTML files. This option over‐
65 rides the BROWSER environment variable. By default, man uses
66 /usr/bin/less-is,
67 -H Specify a command that renders HTML files as text. This option
69 overrides the HTMLPAGER environment variable. By default, man
70 uses /bin/cat,
71 -S section_list
73 List is a colon separated list of manual sections to search.
74 This option overrides the MANSECT environment variable.
75 -a By default, man will exit after displaying the first manual page
77 it finds. Using this option forces man to display all the man‐
78 ual pages that match name, not just the first.
79 -c Reformat the source man page, even when an up-to-date cat page
81 exists. This can be meaningful if the cat page was formatted
82 for a screen with a different number of columns, or if the pre‐
83 formatted page is corrupted.
84 -d Don't actually display the man pages, but do print gobs of
86 debugging information.
87 -D Both display and print debugging info.
89 -f Equivalent to whatis.
91 -F or --preformat
93 Format only - do not display.
94 -h or --help
96 Print a help message and exit.
97 -v, -V or --version
99 Print version information and exit.
100 -k Equivalent to apropos.
102 -K Search for the specified string in *all* man pages. Warning:
104 this is probably very slow! It helps to specify a section.
105 (Just to give a rough idea, on my machine this takes about a
106 minute per 500 man pages.)
107 -m system
109 Specify an alternate set of man pages to search based on the
110 system name given.
111 -p string
113 Specify the sequence of preprocessors to run before nroff or
114 troff. Not all installations will have a full set of preproces‐
115 sors. Some of the preprocessors and the letters used to desig‐
116 nate them are: eqn (e), grap (g), pic (p), tbl (t), vgrind (v),
117 refer (r). This option overrides the MANROFFSEQ environment
118 variable.
119 -t Use /usr/bin/groff -Tps -mandoc to format the manual page, pass‐
121 ing the output to stdout. The default output format of
122 /usr/bin/groff -Tps -mandoc is Postscript, refer to the manual
123 page of /usr/bin/groff -Tps -mandoc for ways to pick an alter‐
124 nate format.
125 Depending on the selected format and the availability of printing
127 devices, the output may need to be passed through some filter or
128 another before being printed.
129 -w or --path
131 Don't actually display the man pages, but do print the loca‐
132 tion(s) of the files that would be formatted or displayed. If no
133 argument is given: display (on stdout) the list of directories
134 that is searched by man for man pages. If manpath is a link to
135 man, then "manpath" is equivalent to "man --path".
136 -W Like -w, but print file names one per line, without additional
138 information. This is useful in shell commands like man -aW man
139 | xargs ls -l
140
143 Man will try to save the formatted man pages, in order to save format‐
144 ting time the next time these pages are needed. Traditionally, format‐
145 ted versions of pages in DIR/manX are saved in DIR/catX, but other map‐
146 pings from man dir to cat dir can be specified in /etc/man.config. No
147 cat pages are saved when the required cat directory does not exist. No
148 cat pages are saved when they are formatted for a line length different
149 from 80. No cat pages are saved when man.config contains the line
150 NOCACHE.
151 It is possible to make man suid to a user man. Then, if a cat directory
153 has owner man and mode 0755 (only writable by man), and the cat files
154 have owner man and mode 0644 or 0444 (only writable by man, or not
155 writable at all), no ordinary user can change the cat pages or put
156 other files in the cat directory. If man is not made suid, then a cat
157 directory should have mode 0777 if all users should be able to leave
158 cat pages there.
159 The option -c forces reformatting a page, even if a recent cat page
161 exists.
162
165 Man will find HTML pages if they live in directories named as expected
166 to be ".html", thus a valid name for an HTML version of the ls(1) man
167 page would be /usr/share/man/htmlman1/ls.1.html.
168
171 man uses a sophisticated method of finding manual page files, based on
172 the invocation options and environment variables, the /etc/man.config
173 configuration file, and some built in conventions and heuristics.
174 First of all, when the name argument to man contains a slash (/), man
176 assumes it is a file specification itself, and there is no searching
177 involved.
178 But in the normal case where name doesn't contain a slash, man searches
180 a variety of directories for a file that could be a manual page for the
181 topic named.
182 If you specify the -M pathlist option, pathlist is a colon-separated
184 list of the directories that man searches.
185 If you don't specify -M but set the MANPATH environment variable, the
187 value of that variable is the list of the directories that man
188 searches.
189 If you don't specify an explicit path list with -M or MANPATH, man
191 develops its own path list based on the contents of the configuration
192 file /etc/man.config. The MANPATH statements in the configuration file
193 identify particular directories to include in the search path.
194 Furthermore, the MANPATH_MAP statements add to the search path depend‐
196 ing on your command search path (i.e. your PATH environment variable).
197 For each directory that may be in the command search path, a MAN‐
198 PATH_MAP statement specifies a directory that should be added to the
199 search path for manual page files. man looks at the PATH variable and
200 adds the corresponding directories to the manual page file search path.
201 Thus, with the proper use of MANPATH_MAP, when you issue the command
202 man xyz, you get a manual page for the program that would run if you
203 issued the command xyz.
204 In addition, for each directory in the command search path (we'll call
206 it a "command directory") for which you do not have a MANPATH_MAP
207 statement, man automatically looks for a manual page directory "nearby"
208 namely as a subdirectory in the command directory itself or in the par‐
209 ent directory of the command directory.
210 You can disable the automatic "nearby" searches by including a NOAU‐
212 TOPATH statement in /etc/man.config.
213 In each directory in the search path as described above, man searches
215 for a file named topic.section, with an optional suffix on the section
216 number and possibly a compression suffix. If it doesn't find such a
217 file, it then looks in any subdirectories named manN or catN where N is
218 the manual section number. If the file is in a catN subdirectory, man
219 assumes it is a formatted manual page file (cat page). Otherwise, man
220 assumes it is unformatted. In either case, if the filename has a known
221 compression suffix (like .gz), man assumes it is gzipped.
222 If you want to see where (or if) man would find the manual page for a
224 particular topic, use the --path (-w) option.
225
228 MANPATH
229 If MANPATH is set, man uses it as the path to search for manual
230 page files. It overrides the configuration file and the auto‐
231 matic search path, but is overridden by the -M invocation
232 option. See SEARCH PATH FOR MANUAL PAGES.
233 MANPL If MANPL is set, its value is used as the display page length.
235 Otherwise, the entire man page will occupy one (long) page.
236 MANROFFSEQ
238 If MANROFFSEQ is set, its value is used to determine the set of
239 preprocessors run before running nroff or troff. By default,
240 pages are passed through the tbl preprocessor before nroff.
241 MANSECT
243 If MANSECT is set, its value is used to determine which manual
244 sections to search.
245 MANWIDTH
247 If MANWIDTH is set, its value is used as the width manpages
248 should be displayed. Otherwise the pages may be displayed over
249 the whole width of your screen.
250 MANPAGER
252 If MANPAGER is set, its value is used as the name of the program
253 to use to display the man page. If not, then PAGER is used. If
254 that has no value either, /usr/bin/less -is is used.
255 BROWSER
257 The name of a browser to use for displaying HTML manual pages.
258 If it is not set, /usr/bin/less -is is used.
259 HTMLPAGER
261 The command to use for rendering HTML manual pages as text. If
262 it is not set, /bin/cat is used.
263 LANG If LANG is set, its value defines the name of the subdirectory
265 where man first looks for man pages. Thus, the command `LANG=dk
266 man 1 foo' will cause man to look for the foo man page in
267 .../dk/man1/foo.1, and if it cannot find such a file, then in
268 .../man1/foo.1, where ... is a directory on the search path.
269 NLSPATH, LC_MESSAGES, LANG
271 The environment variables NLSPATH and LC_MESSAGES (or LANG when
272 the latter does not exist) play a role in locating the message
273 catalog. (But the English messages are compiled in, and for
274 English no catalog is required.) Note that programs like col(1)
275 called by man also use e.g. LC_CTYPE.
276 PATH PATH helps determine the search path for manual page files. See
278 SEARCH PATH FOR MANUAL PAGES.
279 SYSTEM SYSTEM is used to get the default alternate system name (for use
281 with the -m option).
282
284 The -t option only works if a troff-like program is installed.
285 If you see blinking \255 or <AD> instead of hyphens, put `LESS‐
286 CHARSET=latin1' in your environment.
287
289 If you add the line
290 (global-set-key [(f1)] (lambda () (interactive) (manual-entry (cur‐
292 rent-word))))
293 to your .emacs file, then hitting F1 will give you the man page for the
295 library call at the current cursor position.
296 To get a plain text version of a man page, without backspaces and
298 underscores, try
299 # man foo | col -b > foo.mantxt
301
303 John W. Eaton was the original author of man. Zeyd M. Ben-Halim
304 released man 1.2, and Andries Brouwer followed up with versions 1.3
305 thru 1.5p. Federico Lucifredi <flucifredi@acm.org> is the current
306 maintainer.
307
309 apropos(1), whatis(1), less(1), groff(1), man.config(5).
310 September 19, 2005 man(1)