1MAN(1) BSD General Commands Manual MAN(1)
2
4 man — display manual pages
5
7 man [-acfhklw] [-C file] [-M path] [-m path] [-S subsection]
8 [[-s] section] name ...
9
11 The man utility displays the manual pages entitled name. Pages may be
12 selected according to a specific category (section) or machine architec‐
13 ture (subsection).
14 The options are as follows:
16 -a Display all matching manual pages. Normally, only the first page
18 found is displayed.
19 -C file
21 Use the specified file instead of the default configuration file.
22 This permits users to configure their own manual environment.
23 See man.conf(5) for a description of the contents of this file.
24 -c Copy the manual page to the standard output instead of using
26 more(1) to paginate it. This is done by default if the standard
27 output is not a terminal device.
28 When using -c, most terminal devices are unable to show the
30 markup. To print the output of man to the terminal with markup
31 but without using a pager, pipe it to ul(1). To remove the
32 markup, pipe the output to col(1) -b instead.
33 -f A synonym for whatis(1). It searches for name in manual page
35 names and displays the header lines from all matching pages. The
36 search is case insensitive and matches whole words only.
37 -h Display only the SYNOPSIS lines of the requested manual pages.
39 Implies -a and -c.
40 -k A synonym for apropos(1). Instead of name, an expression can be
42 provided using the syntax described in the apropos(1) manual. By
43 default, it displays the header lines of all matching pages.
44 -l A synonym for mandoc(1). The name arguments are interpreted as
46 filenames. No search is done and file, path, section,
47 subsection, and -w are ignored. This option implies -a.
48 -M path
50 Override the list of standard directories which man searches for
51 manual pages. The supplied path must be a colon (‘:’) separated
52 list of directories. This search path may also be set using the
53 environment variable MANPATH.
54 -m path
56 Augment the list of standard directories which man searches for
57 manual pages. The supplied path must be a colon (‘:’) separated
58 list of directories. These directories will be searched before
59 the standard directories or the directories specified using the
60 -M option or the MANPATH environment variable.
61 -S subsection
63 Only show pages for the specified machine(1) architecture.
64 subsection is case insensitive.
65 By default manual pages for all architectures are installed.
67 Therefore this option can be used to view pages for one architec‐
68 ture whilst using another.
69 This option overrides the MACHINE environment variable.
71 [-s] section
73 Only select manuals from the specified section. The currently
74 available sections are:
75 1 General commands (tools and utilities).
77 2 System calls and error numbers.
78 3 Library functions.
79 3p perl(1) programmer's reference guide.
80 4 Device drivers.
81 5 File formats.
82 6 Games.
83 7 Miscellaneous information.
84 8 System maintenance and operation commands.
85 9 Kernel internals.
86 If not specified and a match is found in more than one section,
88 the first match is selected from the following list: 1, 8, 6, 2,
89 3, 5, 7, 4, 9, 3p.
90 -w List the pathnames of all matching manual pages instead of dis‐
92 playing any of them.
93 The options -IKOTW are also supported and are documented in mandoc(1).
95 The options -fkl are mutually exclusive and override each other.
96 Guidelines for writing man pages can be found in mdoc(7).
98 The mandoc.db(5) database is used for looking up manual page entries. In
100 cases where the database is absent, outdated, or corrupt, man falls back
101 to looking for files called name.section. If both a formatted and an
102 unformatted version of the same manual page, for example cat1/foo.0 and
103 man1/foo.1, exist in the same directory, only the unformatted version is
104 used. The database is kept up to date with makewhatis(8), which is run
105 by the weekly(8) maintenance script.
106
108 MACHINE As some manual pages are intended only for specific architec‐
109 tures, man searches any subdirectories, with the same name as
110 the current architecture, in every directory which it searches.
111 Machine specific areas are checked before general areas. The
112 current machine type may be overridden by setting the environ‐
113 ment variable MACHINE to the name of a specific architecture,
114 or with the -S option. MACHINE is case insensitive.
115 MANPAGER Any non-empty value of the environment variable MANPAGER is
117 used instead of the standard pagination program, more(1). If
118 less(1) is used, the interactive :t command can be used to go
119 to the definitions of various terms, for example command line
120 options, command modifiers, internal commands, environment
121 variables, function names, preprocessor macros, errno(2) val‐
122 ues, and some other emphasized words. Some terms may have
123 defining text at more than one place. In that case, the
124 less(1) interactive commands t and T can be used to move to the
125 next and to the previous place providing information about the
126 term last searched for with :t. The -O tag[=term] option docu‐
127 mented in the mandoc(1) manual opens a manual page at the defi‐
128 nition of a specific term rather than at the beginning.
129 MANPATH The standard search path used by man may be changed by specify‐
131 ing a path in the MANPATH environment variable. The format of
132 the path is a colon (‘:’) separated list of directories.
133 Invalid paths are ignored. Overridden by -M, ignored if -l is
134 specified.
135 If MANPATH begins with a colon, it is appended to the default
137 list; if it ends with a colon, it is prepended to the default
138 list; or if it contains two adjacent colons, the standard
139 search path is inserted between the colons. If none of these
140 conditions are met, it overrides the standard search path.
141 PAGER Specifies the pagination program to use when MANPAGER is not
143 defined. If neither PAGER nor MANPAGER is defined, more(1) -s
144 is used.
145
147 /etc/man.conf default man configuration file
148
150 The man utility exits 0 on success, and >0 if an error occurs. See
151 mandoc(1) for details.
152
154 Format a page for pasting extracts into an email message — avoid printing
155 any UTF-8 characters, reduce the width to ease quoting in replies, and
156 remove markup:
157 $ man -T ascii -O width=65 pledge | col -b
159 Read a typeset page in a PDF viewer:
161 $ MANPAGER=mupdf man -T pdf lpd
163
165 apropos(1), col(1), mandoc(1), ul(1), whereis(1), man.conf(5), mdoc(7)
166
168 The man utility is compliant with the IEEE Std 1003.1-2008 (“POSIX.1”)
169 specification.
170 The flags [-aCcfhIKlMmOSsTWw], as well as the environment variables
172 MACHINE, MANPAGER, and MANPATH, are extensions to that specification.
173
175 A man command first appeared in Version 3 AT&T UNIX.
176 The -w option first appeared in Version 7 AT&T UNIX; -f and -k in 4BSD;
178 -M in 4.3BSD; -a in 4.3BSD-Tahoe; -c and -m in 4.3BSD-Reno; -h in 4.3BSD
179 Net/2; -C in NetBSD 1.0; -s and -S in OpenBSD 2.3; and -I, -K, -l, -O,
180 and -W in OpenBSD 5.7. The -T option first appeared in AT&T UNIX III and
181 was also added in OpenBSD 5.7.
182BSD May 10, 2020 BSD