catman(8)

1CATMAN(8)                     Manual pager utils                     CATMAN(8)
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NAME

6       catman - create or update the pre-formatted manual pages
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SYNOPSIS

9       catman [-d?V] [-M path] [-C file] [section] ...
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DESCRIPTION

12       catman  is  used  to  create  an up to date set of pre-formatted manual
13       pages known as cat pages.  Cat pages are generally much faster to  dis‐
14       play  than  the original manual pages, but require extra storage space.
15       The decision to support cat pages is that of the  local  administrator,
16       who must provide suitable directories to contain them.
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18       The  options  available  to  catman are the manual page hierarchies and
19       sections to pre-format.  The default hierarchies are those specified as
20       system  hierarchies  in  the man-db configuration file, and the default
21       sections are either the colon-delimited  contents  of  the  environment
22       variable  $MANSECT or the standard set compiled into man if $MANSECT is
23       undefined.  Supplying catman with a set of whitespace-delimited section
24       names will override both of the above.
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26       catman makes use of the index database cache associated with each hier‐
27       archy to determine which files need to be formatted.
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OPTIONS

30       -d, --debug
31              Print debugging information.
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33       -M path, --manpath=path
34              Specify  an  alternate  colon-delimited  manual  page  hierarchy
35              search  path.  By default, this is all paths indicated as system
36              hierarchies in the man-db configuration file.
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38       -C file, --config-file=file
39              Use this user configuration file  rather  than  the  default  of
40              ~/.manpath.
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42       -?, --help
43              Print a help message and exit.
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45       --usage
46              Print a short usage message and exit.
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48       -V, --version
49              Display version information.
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ENVIRONMENT

52       MANSECT
53              If  $MANSECT is set, its value is a colon-delimited list of sec‐
54              tions and it is used  to  determine  which  manual  sections  to
55              search and in what order.  The default is "1 1p 8 2 3 3p 3pm 4 5
56              6 7 9 0p n l p o 1x 2x 3x 4x 5x 6x 7x 8x", unless overridden  by
57              the SECTION directive in /etc/man_db.conf.
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59       MANPATH
60              If $MANPATH is set, its value is interpreted as the colon-delim‐
61              ited manual page hierarchy search path to use.
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FILES

64       /etc/man_db.conf
65              man-db configuration file.
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67       /usr/man/index.(bt|db|dir|pag)
68              A traditional global index database cache.
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70       /var/catman/index.(bt|db|dir|pag)
71              An alternate or FSSTND compliant global index database cache.
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AUTHOR

77       Wilf. (G.Wilford@ee.surrey.ac.uk).
78       Fabrizio Polacco (fpolacco@debian.org).
79       Colin Watson (cjwatson@debian.org).
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BUGS

82       https://savannah.nongnu.org/bugs/?group=man-db
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862.9.4                             2021-02-08                         CATMAN(8)