path: root/man/en/man.1

man(1)                               General Commands Manual                               man(1)

NAME
       man - format and display the on-line manual pages

SYNOPSIS
       man  [-acdfFhkKtwW]  [--path]  [-m  system] [-p string] [-C config_file] [-M pathlist] [-P
       pager] [-B browser] [-H htmlpager] [-S section_list] [section] name ...

DESCRIPTION
       man formats and displays the on-line manual pages.  If you specify section, man only looks
       in  that  section  of  the manual.  name is normally the name of the manual page, which is
       typically the name of a command, function, or file.  However, if name contains a slash (/)
       then man interprets it as a file specification, so that you can do man ./foo.5 or even man
       /cd/foo/bar.1.gz.

       See below for a description of where man looks for the manual page files.

MANUAL SECTIONS
       The standard sections of the manual include:

       1      User Commands

       2      System Calls

       3      C Library Functions

       4      Devices and Special Files

       5      File Formats and Conventions

       6      Games et. Al.

       7      Miscellanea

       8      System Administration tools and Deamons

       Distributions customize the manual section to their specifics, which often  include  addi-
       tional sections.

OPTIONS
       -C  config_file
              Specify  the  configuration  file  to use; the default is /usr/share/misc/man.conf.
              (See man.conf(5).)

       -M  path
              Specify the list of directories to search for man pages.  Separate the  directories
              with  colons.   An  empty list is the same as not specifying -M at all.  See SEARCH
              PATH FOR MANUAL PAGES.

       -P  pager
              Specify which pager to use.  This option overrides the MANPAGER  environment  vari-
              able,  which  in turn overrides the PAGER variable.  By default, man uses /bin/less
              -is.

       -B     Specify which browser to use on HTML files.  This option overrides the BROWSER  en-
              vironment variable. By default, man uses /bin/less-is,

       -H     Specify a command that renders HTML files as text.  This option overrides the HTML-
              PAGER environment variable. By default, man uses /bin/cat,

       -S  section_list
              List is a colon separated list of manual sections to search.  This option overrides
              the MANSECT environment variable.

       -a     By  default,  man will exit after displaying the first manual page it finds.  Using
              this option forces man to display all the manual pages that match  name,  not  just
              the first.

       -c     Reformat the source man page, even when an up-to-date cat page exists.  This can be
              meaningful if the cat page was formatted for a screen with a  different  number  of
              columns, or if the preformatted page is corrupted.

       -d     Don't actually display the man pages, but do print gobs of debugging information.

       -D     Both display and print debugging info.

       -f     Equivalent to whatis.

       -F or --preformat
              Format only - do not display.

       -h     Print a help message and exit.

       -k     Equivalent to apropos.

       -K     Search  for the specified string in *all* man pages. Warning: this is probably very
              slow! It helps to specify a section.  (Just to give a rough  idea,  on  my  machine
              this takes about a minute per 500 man pages.)

       -m  system
              Specify an alternate set of man pages to search based on the system name given.

       -p  string
              Specify  the  sequence  of preprocessors to run before nroff or troff.  Not all in-
              stallations will have a full set of preprocessors.  Some of the  preprocessors  and
              the letters used to designate them are: eqn (e), grap (g), pic (p), tbl (t), vgrind
              (v), refer (r).  This option overrides the MANROFFSEQ environment variable.

       -t     Use /usr/bin/groff -Tps -mandoc to format the manual page, passing  the  output  to
              stdout.   The  default  output format of /usr/bin/groff -Tps -mandoc is Postscript,
              refer to the manual page of /usr/bin/groff -Tps -mandoc for ways to pick an  alter-
              nate format.

       Depending  on the selected format and the availability of printing devices, the output may
       need to be passed through some filter or another before being printed.

       -w or --path
              Don't actually display the man pages, but do print the  location(s)  of  the  files
              that  would be formatted or displayed. If no argument is given: display (on stdout)
              the list of directories that is searched by man for man pages. If manpath is a link
              to man, then "manpath" is equivalent to "man --path".

       -W     Like  -w,  but print file names one per line, without additional information.  This
              is useful in shell commands like man -aW man | xargs ls -l

CAT PAGES
       Man will try to save the formatted man pages, in order to save formatting  time  the  next
       time  these  pages are needed.  Traditionally, formatted versions of pages in DIR/manX are
       saved in DIR/catX, but other mappings from  man  dir  to  cat  dir  can  be  specified  in
       /usr/share/misc/man.conf.  No cat pages are saved when the required cat directory does not
       exist.  No cat pages are saved when they are formatted for a line  length  different  from
       80.  No cat pages are saved when man.conf contains the line NOCACHE.

       It  is possible to make man suid to a user man. Then, if a cat directory has owner man and
       mode 0755 (only writable by man), and the cat files have owner man and mode 0644  or  0444
       (only  writable by man, or not writable at all), no ordinary user can change the cat pages
       or put other files in the cat directory. If man is not made suid,  then  a  cat  directory
       should have mode 0777 if all users should be able to leave cat pages there.

       The option -c forces reformatting a page, even if a recent cat page exists.

HTML PAGES
       Man will find HTML pages if they live in directories named as expected to be ".html", thus
       a valid name for an HTML version of the  ls(1)  man  page  would  be  /usr/share/man/html-
       man1/ls.1.html.

SEARCH PATH FOR MANUAL PAGES
       man  uses a sophisticated method of finding manual page files, based on the invocation op-
       tions and environment variables, the /usr/share/misc/man.conf configuration file, and some
       built in conventions and heuristics.

       First of all, when the name argument to man contains a slash (/), man assumes it is a file
       specification itself, and there is no searching involved.

       But in the normal case where name doesn't contain a slash, man searches a variety  of  di-
       rectories for a file that could be a manual page for the topic named.

       If  you specify the -M pathlist option, pathlist is a colon-separated list of the directo-
       ries that man searches.

       If you don't specify -M but set the MANPATH environment variable, the value of that  vari-
       able is the list of the directories that man searches.

       If  you  don't specify an explicit path list with -M or MANPATH, man develops its own path
       list based on the contents of the configuration file /usr/share/misc/man.conf.   The  MAN-
       PATH  statements  in  the configuration file identify particular directories to include in
       the search path.

       Furthermore, the MANPATH_MAP statements add to the search path depending on  your  command
       search  path (i.e. your PATH environment variable).  For each directory that may be in the
       command search path, a MANPATH_MAP statement specifies a directory that should be added to
       the search path for manual page files.  man looks at the PATH variable and adds the corre-
       sponding directories to the manual page file search path.  Thus, with the  proper  use  of
       MANPATH_MAP,  when  you  issue  the command man xyz, you get a manual page for the program
       that would run if you issued the command xyz.

       In addition, for each directory in the command search path (we'll call it a  "command  di-
       rectory") for which you do not have a MANPATH_MAP statement, man automatically looks for a
       manual page directory "nearby" namely as a subdirectory in the command directory itself or
       in the parent directory of the command directory.

       You  can  disable  the  automatic "nearby" searches by including a NOAUTOPATH statement in
       /usr/share/misc/man.conf.

       In each directory in the search path as described above, man searches  for  a  file  named
       topic.section,  with  an  optional suffix on the section number and possibly a compression
       suffix.  If it doesn't find such a file, it then looks in any subdirectories named manN or
       catN where N is the manual section number.  If the file is in a catN subdirectory, man as-
       sumes it is a formatted manual page file (cat page).  Otherwise, man assumes it is  unfor-
       matted.   In  either  case, if the filename has a known compression suffix (like .gz), man
       assumes it is gzipped.

       If you want to see where (or if) man would find the manual page for  a  particular  topic,
       use the --path (-w) option.

ENVIRONMENT
       MANPATH
              If  MANPATH  is  set,  man uses it as the path to search for manual page files.  It
              overrides the configuration file and the automatic search path, but  is  overridden
              by the -M invocation option.  See SEARCH PATH FOR MANUAL PAGES.

       MANPL  If  MANPL is set, its value is used as the display page length.  Otherwise, the en-
              tire man page will occupy one (long) page.

       MANROFFSEQ
              If MANROFFSEQ is set, its value is used to determine the set of  preprocessors  run
              before  running  nroff or troff.  By default, pages are passed through the tbl pre-
              processor before nroff.

       MANSECT
              If MANSECT is set, its value is used to determine which manual sections to search.

       MANWIDTH
              If MANWIDTH is set, its value is used as the width manpages  should  be  displayed.
              Otherwise the pages may be displayed over the whole width of your screen.

       MANPAGER
              If  MANPAGER is set, its value is used as the name of the program to use to display
              the man page.  If not, then PAGER is used. If that has no value  either,  /bin/less
              -is is used.

       BROWSER
              The  name  of a browser to use for displaying HTML manual pages.  If it is not set,
              /bin/less -is is used.

       HTMLPAGER
              The command to use for rendering HTML manual pages as text.   If  it  is  not  set,
              /bin/cat is used.

       LANG   If  LANG  is  set,  its  value defines the name of the subdirectory where man first
              looks for man pages. Thus, the command `LANG=dk man 1 foo' will cause man  to  look
              for  the foo man page in .../dk/man1/foo.1, and if it cannot find such a file, then
              in .../man1/foo.1, where ... is a directory on the search path.

       NLSPATH, LC_MESSAGES, LANG
              The environment variables NLSPATH and LC_MESSAGES (or LANG when the latter does not
              exist)  play a role in locating the message catalog.  (But the English messages are
              compiled in, and for English no catalog is  required.)   Note  that  programs  like
              col(1) called by man also use e.g. LC_CTYPE.

       PATH   PATH  helps  determine  the search path for manual page files.  See SEARCH PATH FOR
              MANUAL PAGES.

       SYSTEM SYSTEM is used to get the default alternate system name (for use with  the  -m  op-
              tion).

BUGS
       The -t option only works if a troff-like program is installed.
       If  you see blinking \255 or <AD> instead of hyphens, put `LESSCHARSET=latin1' in your en-
       vironment.

TIPS
       If you add the line

        (global-set-key [(f1)] (lambda () (interactive) (manual-entry (current-word))))

       to your .emacs file, then hitting F1 will give you the man page for the  library  call  at
       the current cursor position.

       To get a plain text version of a man page, without backspaces and underscores, try

         # man foo | col -b > foo.mantxt

AUTHOR
       John W. Eaton was the original author of man.  Zeyd M. Ben-Halim released man 1.2, and An-
       dries Brouwer  followed  up  with  versions  1.3  thru  1.5p.   Federico  Lucifredi  <flu-
       cifredi@acm.org> is the current maintainer.

SEE ALSO
       apropos(1), whatis(1), less(1), groff(1), man.conf(5).

                                        September 19, 2005                                 man(1)