NAME
man —
display the on-line manual pages
(aka “man pages”)
SYNOPSIS
man |
[-acw|-h]
[-C file]
[-M path]
[-m path]
[-S srch]
[[-s]
section] name
... |
man |
[-C
file] -f
command ... |
man |
[-C
file] -k
keyword ... |
DESCRIPTION
The
man utility displays the manual pages named on the command
line. Its options are as follows:
-
-
- -a
- Display all of the man pages for a specified
section and name combination.
(Normally, only the first man page found is displayed.)
-
-
- -C
- Use the specified file instead of the
default configuration file. This permits users to configure their own man
environment. See
man.conf(5) for a
description of the contents of this file.
-
-
- -c
- Copy the man page to the standard output instead of using
more(1) to paginate it. This
is done by default if the standard output is not a terminal device.
-
-
- -f
- Synonym for
whatis(1). It searches man
pages for command in their names and displays header
lines from all matching pages.
-
-
- -h
- Display only the “SYNOPSIS” lines of the
requested man pages. For commands, this is typically the command line
usage information. For library functions, this usually contains the
required include files and function prototypes.
-
-
- -k
- Search man pages for keyword(s), in
the same manner as
apropos(1).
-
-
- -M
- Override the list of standard directories which
man searches for man pages. The supplied
path must be a colon (“:”) separated
list of directories. This search path may also be set using the
environment variable
MANPATH
. The subdirectories
to be searched, and their search order, is specified by the
“_subdir” line in the man configuration
file.
-
-
- -m
- Augment the list of standard directories which
man searches for man pages. The supplied
path must be a colon (“:”) separated
list of directories. These directories will be searched before the
standard directories or the directories specified using the
-M option or the
MANPATH
environment variable. The subdirectories to be searched, and their search
order, is specified by the “_subdir” line in the
man configuration file.
-
-
- -p
- Print the search path for the manual pages.
-
-
- -s
- Restrict the directories that man will
search to the specified section. The man configuration
file (see man.conf(5))
specifies the possible section values that are
currently available.
-
-
- -S
- Display only man pages that have the specified string in
the directory part of their filenames. This allows the man page search
process criteria to be narrowed without having to change the MANPATH or
“_default” variables.
-
-
- -w
- List the pathnames of the man pages which
man would display for the specified
section and name
combination.
If the ‘
-s
’ option is not
specified, there is more than one argument, the
‘
-k
’ option is not used,
and the first argument is a valid section, then that argument will be used as
if specified by the ‘
-s
’
option.
If
name is given with a full path (beginning with
‘
/
’) or a relative path
that begins with ‘
./
’ or
‘
../
’, then
man interprets it as a file specification, so that you can
do
man ./foo.5 or even
man /cd/foo/bar.1.gz. If
name contains
‘
/
’ but does not match
one of the above cases, then the search path is used; this allows you to
request machine-specific man pages, such as
man
vax/boot.
ENVIRONMENT
-
-
MACHINE
- As some man pages are intended only for specific
architectures, man searches any subdirectories, with the
same name as the current architecture, in every directory which it
searches. Machine specific areas are checked before general areas. The
current machine type may be overridden by setting the environment variable
MACHINE
to the name of a specific architecture.
Machine-specific man pages may also be requested by prepending the
relevant subdirectory name to the page name, separated by
‘/
’.
-
-
MANPATH
- The standard search path used by man may
be overridden by specifying a path in the
MANPATH
environment variable. The format of the path is a colon (“:”)
separated list of directories. The subdirectories to be searched as well
as their search order is specified by the “_subdir” line in
the man configuration file.
-
-
PAGER
- The pagination command used for writing the output. If the
PAGER
environment variable is null or not set, the
standard pagination program
more(1) will be used.
FILES
- /etc/man.conf
- default man configuration
file.
SEE ALSO
apropos(1),
whatis(1),
whereis(1),
man.conf(5),
mdoc(7),
mdoc.samples(7)
STANDARDS
man conforms to
X/Open Commands and Utilities
Issue 5 (“XCU5”).
BUGS
The on-line man pages are, by necessity, forgiving toward stupid display
devices, causing a few man pages to be not as nicely formatted as their
typeset counterparts.