NAME
mandoc
—
format manual pages
SYNOPSIS
mandoc |
[-ac ] [-I
os =name]
[-K encoding]
[-mdoc | -man ]
[-O options]
[-T output]
[-W level]
[file ...] |
DESCRIPTION
The mandoc
utility formats manual pages
for display.
By default, mandoc
reads
mdoc(7) or man(7) text from stdin and produces
-T
locale
output.
The options are as follows:
-a
- If the standard output is a terminal device and
-c
is not specified, use less(1) to paginate the output, just like man(1) would. -c
- Copy the formatted manual pages to the standard output without using
less(1) to paginate them. This is the default. It can be specified
to override
-a
. -I
os
=name- Override the default operating system name for the
mdoc(7)
Os
and for the man(7)TH
macro. -K
encoding- Specify the input encoding. The supported encoding
arguments are
us-ascii
,iso-8859-1
, andutf-8
. If not specified, autodetection uses the first match in the following list:- If the first three bytes of the input file are the UTF-8 byte order
mark (BOM, 0xefbbbf), input is interpreted as
utf-8
. - If the first or second line of the input file matches the
emacs mode
line format
.\" -*- [...;] coding: encoding; -*-
then input is interpreted according to encoding.
- If the first non-ASCII byte in the file introduces a valid UTF-8
sequence, input is interpreted as
utf-8
. - Otherwise, input is interpreted as
iso-8859-1
.
- If the first three bytes of the input file are the UTF-8 byte order
mark (BOM, 0xefbbbf), input is interpreted as
-mdoc
|-man
- With
-mdoc
, all input files are interpreted as mdoc(7). With-man
, all input files are interpreted as man(7). By default, the input language is automatically detected for each file: if the first macro isDd
orDt
, the mdoc(7) parser is used; otherwise, the man(7) parser is used. With other arguments,-m
is silently ignored. -O
options- Comma-separated output options. See the descriptions of the individual output formats for supported options.
-T
output- Select the output format. Supported values for the
output argument are
ascii
,html
, the default oflocale
,man
,markdown
,pdf
,ps
,tree
, andutf8
.The special
-T
lint
mode only parses the input and produces no output. It implies-W
all
and redirects parser messages, which usually appear on standard error output, to standard output. -W
level- Specify the minimum message level to be reported on
the standard error output and to affect the exit status. The
level can be
base
,style
,warning
,error
, orunsupp
. Thebase
level automatically derives the operating system from the contents of theOs
macro, from the-Ios
command line option, or from the uname(3) return value. The levelsopenbsd
andnetbsd
are variants ofbase
that bypass autodetection and request validation of base system conventions for a particular operating system. The levelall
is an alias forbase
. By default,mandoc
is silent. See EXIT STATUS and DIAGNOSTICS for details.The special option
-W
stop
tellsmandoc
to exit after parsing a file that causes warnings or errors of at least the requested level. No formatted output will be produced from that file. If both a level andstop
are requested, they can be joined with a comma, for example-W
error
,stop
. - file
- Read from the given input file. If multiple files are specified, they are
processed in the given order. If unspecified,
mandoc
reads from standard input.
The options -fhklw
are also supported and
are documented in man(1). In -f
and
-k
mode, mandoc
also
supports the options -CMmOSs
described in the
apropos(1) manual. The options -fkl
are
mutually exclusive and override each other.
ASCII Output
Use -T
ascii
to
force text output in 7-bit ASCII character encoding documented in the
ascii(7) manual page, ignoring the
locale(1) set in the environment.
Font styles are applied by using back-spaced encoding such that an
underlined character ‘c’ is rendered as
‘_\[bs]c’, where ‘\[bs]’ is the back-space
character number 8. Emboldened characters are rendered as
‘c\[bs]c’. This markup is typically converted to appropriate
terminal sequences by the pager or
ul(1).
To remove the markup, pipe the output to
col(1) -b
instead.
The special characters documented in mandoc_char(7) are rendered best-effort in an ASCII equivalent. In particular, opening and closing ‘single quotes’ are represented as characters number 0x60 and 0x27, respectively, which agrees with all ASCII standards from 1965 to the latest revision (2012) and which matches the traditional way in which roff(7) formatters represent single quotes in ASCII output. This correct ASCII rendering may look strange with modern Unicode-compatible fonts because contrary to ASCII, Unicode uses the code point U+0060 for the grave accent only, never for an opening quote.
The following -O
arguments are
accepted:
indent
=indent- The left margin for normal text is set to indent blank characters instead of the default of five for mdoc(7) and seven for man(7). Increasing this is not recommended; it may result in degraded formatting, for example overfull lines or ugly line breaks. When output is to a pager on a terminal that is less than 66 columns wide, the default is reduced to three columns.
mdoc
- Format man(7) input files in
mdoc(7) output style. This prints the operating system name rather
than the page title on the right side of the footer line, and it implies
-O
indent
=5. One useful application is for checking that-T
man
output formats in the same way as the mdoc(7) source it was generated from. tag
[=term]- If the formatted manual page is opened in a pager, go to the definition of
the term rather than showing the manual page from
the beginning. If no term is specified, reuse the
first command line argument that is not a section
number. If that argument is in
apropos(1) key=val
format, only the val is used rather than the
argument as a whole. This is useful for commands like
‘
man -akO tag Ic=ulimit
’ to search for a keyword and jump right to its definition in the matching manual pages. width
=width- The output width is set to width instead of the default of 78. When output is to a pager on a terminal that is less than 79 columns wide, the default is reduced to one less than the terminal width. In any case, lines that are output in literal mode are never wrapped and may exceed the output width.
HTML Output
Output produced by -T
html
conforms to HTML5 using optional self-closing
tags. Default styles use only CSS1. Equations rendered from
eqn(7) blocks use MathML.
The file /usr/share/misc/mandoc.css
documents style-sheet classes available for customising output. If a
style-sheet is not specified with -O
style
, -T
html
defaults to simple output (via an embedded
style-sheet) readable in any graphical or text-based web browser.
Non-ASCII characters are rendered as hexadecimal Unicode character references.
The following -O
arguments are
accepted:
fragment
- Omit the <!DOCTYPE> declaration and the <html>, <head>,
and <body> elements and only emit the subtree below the <body>
element. The
style
argument will be ignored. This is useful when embedding manual content within existing documents. includes
=fmt- The string fmt, for example,
../src/%I.html, is used as a template for linked
header files (usually via the
In
macro). Instances of ‘%I’ are replaced with the include filename. The default is not to present a hyperlink. man
=fmt[;fmt]- The string fmt, for example,
../html%S/%N.%S.html, is used as a template for
linked manuals (usually via the
Xr
macro). Instances of ‘%N’ and ‘%S’ are replaced with the linked manual's name and section, respectively. If no section is included, section 1 is assumed. The default is not to present a hyperlink. If two formats are given and a file %N.%S exists in the current directory, the first format is used; otherwise, the second format is used. style
=style.css- The file style.css is used for an external style-sheet. This must be a valid absolute or relative URI.
tag
[=term]- Same syntax and semantics as for ASCII
Output. This is implemented by passing a
file://
URI ending in a fragment identifier to the pager rather than passing merely a file name. When using this argument, use a pager supporting such URIs, for exampleMANPAGER='lynx -force_html' man -T html -O tag=MANPAGER man MANPAGER='w3m -T text/html' man -T html -O tag=toc mandoc
Consequently, for HTML output, this argument does not work with more(1) or less(1). For example, ‘
MANPAGER=less man -T html -O tag=toc mandoc
’ does not work because less(1) does not supportfile://
URIs. toc
- If an input file contains at least two non-standard sections, print a table of contents near the beginning of the output.
Locale Output
By default, mandoc
automatically selects
UTF-8 or ASCII output according to the current
locale(1). If any of the environment variables
LC_ALL
, LC_CTYPE
, or
LANG
are set and the first one that is set selects
the UTF-8 character encoding, it produces
UTF-8 Output; otherwise, it falls
back to ASCII Output. This output
mode can also be selected explicitly with -T
locale
.
Man Output
Use -T
man
to
translate mdoc(7) input into
man(7) output format. This is useful for distributing manual sources
to legacy systems lacking
mdoc(7) formatters. Embedded
eqn(7) and tbl(7) code is not supported.
If the input format of a file is
man(7), the input is copied to the output. The parser is also run,
and as usual, the -W
level controls which
DIAGNOSTICS are displayed before
copying the input to the output.
Markdown Output
Use -T
markdown
to
translate mdoc(7) input to the markdown format conforming to
John
Gruber's 2004 specification. The output also almost conforms to the
CommonMark
specification.
The character set used for the markdown output is ASCII. Non-ASCII characters are encoded as HTML entities. Since that is not possible in literal font contexts, because these are rendered as code spans and code blocks in the markdown output, non-ASCII characters are transliterated to ASCII approximations in these contexts.
Markdown is a very weak markup language, so all semantic markup is
lost, and even part of the presentational markup may be lost. Do not use
this as an intermediate step in converting to HTML; instead, use
-T
html
directly.
The man(7),
tbl(7), and eqn(7) input languages are not supported by
-T
markdown
output mode.
PDF Output
PDF-1.1 output may be generated by -T
pdf
. See
PostScript Output for
-O
arguments and defaults.
PostScript Output
PostScript "Adobe-3.0" Level-2 pages may be generated by
-T
ps
. Output pages default
to letter sized and are rendered in the Times font family, 11-point. Margins
are calculated as 1/9 the page length and width. Line-height is 1.4m.
Special characters are rendered as in ASCII Output.
The following -O
arguments are
accepted:
paper
=name- The paper size name may be one of a3, a4, a5, legal, or letter. You may also manually specify dimensions as NNxNN, width by height in millimetres. If an unknown value is encountered, letter is used.
UTF-8 Output
Use -T
utf8
to
force text output in UTF-8 multi-byte character encoding, ignoring the
locale(1) settings in the environment. See
ASCII Output regarding font styles
and -O
arguments.
On operating systems lacking locale or wide character support, and
on those where the internal character representation is not UCS-4,
mandoc
always falls back to
ASCII Output.
Syntax tree output
Use -T
tree
to
show a human readable representation of the syntax tree. It is useful for
debugging the source code of manual pages. The exact format is subject to
change, so don't write parsers for it.
The first paragraph shows meta data found in the
mdoc(7) prologue, on the
man(7) TH
line, or the fallbacks used.
In the tree dump, each output line shows one syntax tree node. Child nodes are indented with respect to their parent node. The columns are:
- For macro nodes, the macro name; for text and tbl(7) nodes, the content. There is a special format for eqn(7) nodes.
- Node type (text, elem, block, head, body, body-end, tail, tbl, eqn).
- Flags:
- An opening parenthesis if the node is an opening delimiter.
- An asterisk if the node starts a new input line.
- The input line number (starting at one).
- A colon.
- The input column number (starting at one).
- A closing parenthesis if the node is a closing delimiter.
- A full stop if the node ends a sentence.
- BROKEN if the node is a block broken by another block.
- NOSRC if the node is not in the input file, but automatically generated from macros.
- NOPRT if the node is not supposed to generate output for any output format.
The following -O
argument is accepted:
noval
- Skip validation and show the unvalidated syntax tree. This can help to find out whether a given behaviour is caused by the parser or by the validator. Meta data is not available in this case.
ENVIRONMENT
LC_CTYPE
- The character encoding locale(1). When Locale Output is selected, it decides whether to use ASCII or UTF-8 output format. It never affects the interpretation of input files.
MANPAGER
- Any non-empty value of the environment variable
MANPAGER
is used instead of the standard pagination program, less(1); see man(1) for details. Only used if-a
or-l
is specified. PAGER
- Specifies the pagination program to use when
MANPAGER
is not defined. If neither PAGER nor MANPAGER is defined, less(1) is used. Only used if-a
or-l
is specified.
EXIT STATUS
The mandoc
utility exits with one of the
following values, controlled by the message level
associated with the -W
option:
- 0
- No base system convention violations, style suggestions, warnings, or errors occurred, or those that did were ignored because they were lower than the requested level.
- 1
- At least one base system convention violation or style suggestion
occurred, but no warning or error, and
-W
base
or-W
style
was specified. - 2
- At least one warning occurred, but no error, and
-W
warning
or a lower level was requested. - 3
- At least one parsing error occurred, but no unsupported feature was
encountered, and
-W
error
or a lower level was requested. - 4
- At least one unsupported feature was encountered, and
-W
unsupp
or a lower level was requested. - 5
- Invalid command line arguments were specified. No input files have been read.
- 6
- An operating system error occurred, for example exhaustion of memory, file
descriptors, or process table entries. Such errors may cause
mandoc
to exit at once, possibly in the middle of parsing or formatting a file.
Note that selecting -T
lint
output mode implies -W
all
.
EXAMPLES
To page manuals to the terminal:
$ mandoc -l mandoc.1 man.1 apropos.1
makewhatis.8
To produce HTML manuals with /usr/share/misc/mandoc.css as the style-sheet:
$ mandoc -T html -O
style=/usr/share/misc/mandoc.css mdoc.7 > mdoc.7.html
To check over a large set of manuals:
$ mandoc -T lint `find /usr/src -name
\*\.[1-9]`
To produce a series of PostScript manuals for A4 paper:
$ mandoc -T ps -O paper=a4 mdoc.7
man.7 > manuals.ps
Convert a modern mdoc(7) manual to the older man(7) format, for use on systems lacking an mdoc(7) parser:
$ mandoc -T man foo.mdoc >
foo.man
DIAGNOSTICS
Messages displayed by mandoc
follow this
format:
mandoc
:
file:line:column:
level: message:
macro arguments (os)The first three fields identify the file name, line number, and column number of the input file where the message was triggered. The line and column numbers start at 1. Both are omitted for messages referring to an input file as a whole. All level and message strings are explained below. The name of the macro triggering the message and its arguments are omitted where meaningless. The os operating system specifier is omitted for messages that are relevant for all operating systems. Fatal messages about invalid command line arguments or operating system errors, for example when memory is exhausted, may also omit the file and level fields.
Message levels have the following meanings:
syserr
- An operating system error occurred. There isn't necessarily anything wrong with the input files. Output may all the same be missing or incomplete.
badarg
- Invalid command line arguments were specified. No input files have been read and no output is produced.
unsupp
- An input file uses unsupported low-level
roff(7) features. The output may be incomplete and/or misformatted,
so using GNU troff instead of
mandoc
to process the file may be preferable. error
- Indicates a risk of information loss or severe misformatting, in most cases caused by serious syntax errors.
warning
- Indicates a risk that the information shown or its formatting may mismatch the author's intent in minor ways. Additionally, syntax errors are classified at least as warnings, even if they do not usually cause misformatting.
style
- An input file uses dubious or discouraged style. This is not a complaint
about the syntax, and probably neither formatting nor portability are in
danger. While great care is taken to avoid false positives on the higher
message levels, the
style
level tries to reduce the probability that issues go unnoticed, so it may occasionally issue bogus suggestions. Please use your good judgement to decide whether any particularstyle
suggestion really justifies a change to the input file. base
- A convention used in the base system of a specific operating system is not
adhered to. These are not markup mistakes, and neither the quality of
formatting nor portability are in danger. Messages of the
base
level are printed with the more intuitivestyle
level tag.
Messages of the base
,
style
, warning
,
error
, and unsupp
levels are
hidden unless their level, or a lower level, is requested using a
-W
option or -T
lint
output mode.
As indicated below, all base
and some
style
checks are only performed if a specific
operating system name occurs in the arguments of the
-W
command line option, of the
Os
macro, of the -Ios
command line option, or, if neither are present, in the return value of the
uname(3) function.
Conventions for base system manuals
- Mdocdate found
- (mdoc, NetBSD) The
Dd
macro uses CVSMdocdate
keyword substitution, which is not supported by the NetBSD base system. Consider using the conventional “Month dd, yyyy” format instead. - Mdocdate missing
- (mdoc, OpenBSD) The
Dd
macro does not use CVSMdocdate
keyword substitution, but using it is conventionally expected in the OpenBSD base system. - unknown architecture
- (mdoc, OpenBSD, NetBSD)
The third argument of the
Dt
macro does not match any of the architectures this operating system is running on. - operating system explicitly specified
- (mdoc, OpenBSD, NetBSD)
The
Os
macro has an argument. In the base system, it is conventionally left blank. - RCS id missing
- (OpenBSD, NetBSD) The
manual page lacks the comment line with the RCS identifier generated by
CVS
OpenBSD
orNetBSD
keyword substitution as conventionally used in these operating systems.
Style suggestions
- legacy man(7) date format
- (mdoc) The
Dd
macro uses the legacy man(7) date format “yyyy-dd-mm”. Consider using the conventional mdoc(7) date format “Month dd, yyyy” instead. - normalizing date format to: ...
- (mdoc, man) The
Dd
orTH
macro provides an abbreviated month name or a day number with a leading zero. In the formatted output, the month name is written out in full and the leading zero is omitted. - lower case character in document title
- (mdoc, man) The title is still used as given in the
Dt
orTH
macro. - duplicate RCS id
- A single manual page contains two copies of the RCS identifier for the same operating system. Consider deleting the later instance and moving the first one up to the top of the page.
- possible typo in section name
- (mdoc) Fuzzy string matching revealed that the argument of an
Sh
macro is similar, but not identical to a standard section name. - unterminated quoted argument
- (roff) Macro arguments can be enclosed in double quote characters such that space characters and macro names contained in the quoted argument need not be escaped. The closing quote of the last argument of a macro can be omitted. However, omitting it is not recommended because it makes the code harder to read.
- useless macro
- (mdoc) A
Bt
,Tn
, orUd
macro was found. Simply delete it: it serves no useful purpose. - consider using OS macro
- (mdoc) A string was found in plain text or in a
Bx
macro that could be represented usingOx
,Nx
,Fx
, orDx
. - errnos out of order
- (mdoc, NetBSD) The
Er
items in aBl
list are not in alphabetical order. - duplicate errno
- (mdoc, NetBSD) A
Bl
list contains two consecutiveIt
entries describing the sameEr
number. - referenced manual not found
- (mdoc) An
Xr
macro references a manual page that was not found. When running with-W
base
, the search is restricted to the base system, by default to /usr/share/man:/usr/X11R6/man. This path can be configured at compile time using theMANPATH_BASE
preprocessor macro. When running with-W
style
, the search is done along the full search path as described in the man(1) manual page, respecting the-m
and-M
command line options, theMANPATH
environment variable, the man.conf(5) file and falling back to the default of /usr/share/man:/usr/X11R6/man:/usr/local/man, also configurable at compile time using theMANPATH_DEFAULT
preprocessor macro. - trailing delimiter
- (mdoc) The last argument of an
Ex
,Fo
,Nd
,Nm
,Os
,Sh
,Ss
,St
, orSx
macro ends with a trailing delimiter. This is usually bad style and often indicates typos. Most likely, the delimiter can be removed. - no blank before trailing delimiter
- (mdoc) The last argument of a macro that supports trailing delimiter arguments is longer than one byte and ends with a trailing delimiter. Consider inserting a blank such that the delimiter becomes a separate argument, thus moving it out of the scope of the macro.
- fill mode already enabled, skipping
- (man) A
fi
request occurs even though the document is still in fill mode, or already switched back to fill mode. It has no effect. - fill mode already disabled, skipping
- (man) An
nf
request occurs even though the document already switched to no-fill mode and did not switch back to fill mode yet. It has no effect. - input text line longer than 80 bytes
- Consider breaking the input text line at one of the blank characters before column 80.
- verbatim "--", maybe consider using \(em
- (mdoc) Even though the ASCII output device renders an em-dash as "--", that is not a good way to write it in an input file because it renders poorly on all other output devices.
- function name without markup
- (mdoc) A word followed by an empty pair of parentheses occurs on a text
line. Consider using an
Fn
orXr
macro. - whitespace at end of input line
- (mdoc, man, roff) Whitespace at the end of input lines is almost never semantically significant — but in the odd case where it might be, it is extremely confusing when reviewing and maintaining documents.
- bad comment style
- (roff) Comment lines start with a dot, a backslash, and a double-quote
character. The
mandoc
utility treats the line as a comment line even without the backslash, but leaving out the backslash might not be portable.
Warnings related to the document prologue
- missing manual title, using UNTITLED
- (mdoc) A
Dt
macro has no arguments, or there is noDt
macro before the first non-prologue macro. - missing manual title, using ""
- (man) There is no
TH
macro, or it has no arguments. - missing manual section, using ""
- (mdoc, man) A
Dt
orTH
macro lacks the mandatory section argument. - unknown manual section
- (mdoc) The section number in a
Dt
line is invalid, but still used. - filename/section mismatch
- (mdoc, man) The name of the input file being processed is known and its
file name extension starts with a non-zero digit, but the
Dt
orTH
macro contains a section argument that starts with a different non-zero digit. The section argument is used as provided anyway. Consider checking whether the file name or the argument need a correction. - missing date, using ""
- (mdoc, man) The document was parsed as
mdoc(7) and it has no
Dd
macro, or theDd
macro has no arguments or only empty arguments; or the document was parsed as man(7) and it has noTH
macro, or theTH
macro has less than three arguments or its third argument is empty. - cannot parse date, using it verbatim
- (mdoc, man) The date given in a
Dd
orTH
macro does not follow the conventional format. - date in the future, using it anyway
- (mdoc, man) The date given in a
Dd
orTH
macro is more than a day ahead of the current system time(3). - missing Os macro, using ""
- (mdoc) The default or current system is not shown in this case.
- late prologue macro
- (mdoc) A
Dd
orOs
macro occurs after some non-prologue macro, but still takes effect. - prologue macros out of order
- (mdoc) The prologue macros are not given in the conventional order
Dd
,Dt
,Os
. All three macros are used even when given in another order.
Warnings regarding document structure
- .so is fragile, better use ln(1)
- (roff) Including files only works when the parser program runs with the correct current working directory.
- no document body
- (mdoc, man) The document body contains neither text nor macros. An empty document is shown, consisting only of a header and a footer line.
- content before first section header
- (mdoc, man) Some macros or text precede the first
Sh
orSH
section header. The offending macros and text are parsed and added to the top level of the syntax tree, outside any section block. - first section is not NAME
- (mdoc) The argument of the first
Sh
macro is not ‘NAME’. This may confuse makewhatis(8) and apropos(1). - NAME section without Nm before Nd
- (mdoc) The NAME section does not contain any
Nm
child macro before the firstNd
macro. - NAME section without description
- (mdoc) The NAME section lacks the mandatory
Nd
child macro. - description not at the end of NAME
- (mdoc) The NAME section does contain an
Nd
child macro, but other content follows it. - bad NAME section content
- (mdoc) The NAME section contains plain text or macros other than
Nm
andNd
. - missing comma before name
- (mdoc) The NAME section contains an
Nm
macro that is neither the first one nor preceded by a comma. - missing description line, using ""
- (mdoc) The
Nd
macro lacks the required argument. The title line of the manual will end after the dash. - description line outside NAME section
- (mdoc) An
Nd
macro appears outside the NAME section. The arguments are printed anyway and the following text is used for apropos(1), but none of that behaviour is portable. - sections out of conventional order
- (mdoc) A standard section occurs after another section it usually precedes. All section titles are used as given, and the order of sections is not changed.
- duplicate section title
- (mdoc) The same standard section title occurs more than once.
- unexpected section
- (mdoc) A standard section header occurs in a section of the manual where it normally isn't useful.
- cross reference to self
- (mdoc) An
Xr
macro refers to a name and section matching the section of the present manual page and a name mentioned in anNm
macro in the NAME or SYNOPSIS section, or in anFn
orFo
macro in the SYNOPSIS. Consider usingNm
orFn
instead ofXr
. - unusual Xr order
- (mdoc) In the SEE ALSO section, an
Xr
macro with a lower section number follows one with a higher number, or twoXr
macros referring to the same section are out of alphabetical order. - unusual Xr punctuation
- (mdoc) In the SEE ALSO section, punctuation between two
Xr
macros differs from a single comma, or there is trailing punctuation after the lastXr
macro. - AUTHORS section without An macro
- (mdoc) An AUTHORS sections contains no
An
macros, or only empty ones. Probably, there are author names lacking markup.
Warnings related to macros and nesting
- obsolete macro
- (mdoc) See the mdoc(7) manual for replacements.
- macro neither callable nor escaped
- (mdoc) The name of a macro that is not callable appears on a macro line. It is printed verbatim. If the intention is to call it, move it to its own input line; otherwise, escape it by prepending ‘\&’.
- skipping paragraph macro
- In mdoc(7) documents, this happens
- at the beginning and end of sections and subsections
- right before non-compact lists and displays
- at the end of items in non-column, non-compact lists
- and for multiple consecutive paragraph macros.
- for empty
P
,PP
, andLP
macros - for
IP
macros having neither head nor body arguments - for
br
orsp
right afterSH
orSS
- moving paragraph macro out of list
- (mdoc) A list item in a
Bl
list contains a trailing paragraph macro. The paragraph macro is moved after the end of the list. - skipping no-space macro
- (mdoc) An input line begins with an
Ns
macro, or the next argument after anNs
macro is an isolated closing delimiter. The macro is ignored. - blocks badly nested
- (mdoc) If two blocks intersect, one should completely contain the other.
Otherwise, rendered output is likely to look strange in any output format,
and rendering in SGML-based output formats is likely to be outright wrong
because such languages do not support badly nested blocks at all. Typical
examples of badly nested blocks are "
Ao Bo Ac Bc
" and "Ao Bq Ac
". In these examples,Ac
breaksBo
andBq
, respectively. - nested displays are not portable
- (mdoc) A
Bd
,D1
, orDl
display occurs nested inside anotherBd
display. This works withmandoc
, but fails with most other implementations. - moving content out of list
- (mdoc) A
Bl
list block contains text or macros before the firstIt
macro. The offending children are moved before the beginning of the list. - first macro on line
- Inside a
Bl
-column
list, aTa
macro occurs as the first macro on a line, which is not portable. - line scope broken
- (man) While parsing the next-line scope of the previous macro, another macro is found that prematurely terminates the previous one. The previous, interrupted macro is deleted from the parse tree.
Warnings related to missing arguments
- skipping empty request
- (roff, eqn) The macro name is missing from a macro definition request, or an eqn(7) control statement or operation keyword lacks its required argument.
- conditional request controls empty scope
- (roff) A conditional request is only useful if any of the following
follows it on the same logical input line:
- The ‘\{’ keyword to open a multi-line scope.
- A request or macro or some text, resulting in a single-line scope.
- The immediate end of the logical line without any intervening whitespace, resulting in next-line scope.
el
clause. - skipping empty macro
- (mdoc) The indicated macro has no arguments and hence no effect.
- empty block
- (mdoc, man) A
Bd
,Bk
,Bl
,D1
,Dl
,MT
,RS
, orUR
block contains nothing in its body and will produce no output. - empty argument, using 0n
- (mdoc) The required width is missing after
Bd
orBl
-offset
or-width
. - missing display type, using -ragged
- (mdoc) The
Bd
macro is invoked without the required display type. - list type is not the first argument
- (mdoc) In a
Bl
macro, at least one other argument precedes the type argument. Themandoc
utility copes with any argument order, but some other mdoc(7) implementations do not. - missing -width in -tag list, using 8n
- (mdoc) Every
Bl
macro having the-tag
argument requires-width
, too. - missing utility name, using ""
- (mdoc) The
Ex
-std
macro is called without an argument beforeNm
has first been called with an argument. - missing function name, using ""
- (mdoc) The
Fo
macro is called without an argument. No function name is printed. - empty head in list item
- (mdoc) In a
Bl
-diag
,-hang
,-inset
,-ohang
, or-tag
list, anIt
macro lacks the required argument. The item head is left empty. - empty list item
- (mdoc) In a
Bl
-bullet
,-dash
,-enum
, or-hyphen
list, anIt
block is empty. An empty list item is shown. - missing argument, using next line
- (mdoc) An
It
macro in aBd
-column
list has no arguments. Whilemandoc
uses the text or macros of the following line, if any, for the cell, other formatters may misformat the list. - missing font type, using \fR
- (mdoc) A
Bf
macro has no argument. It switches to the default font. - unknown font type, using \fR
- (mdoc) The
Bf
argument is invalid. The default font is used instead. - nothing follows prefix
- (mdoc) A
Pf
macro has no argument, or only one argument and no macro follows on the same input line. This defeats its purpose; in particular, spacing is not suppressed before the text or macros following on the next input line. - empty reference block
- (mdoc) An
Rs
macro is immediately followed by anRe
macro on the next input line. Such an empty block does not produce any output. - missing section argument
- (mdoc) An
Xr
macro lacks its second, section number argument. The first argument, i.e. the name, is printed, but without subsequent parentheses. - missing -std argument, adding it
- (mdoc) An
Ex
orRv
macro lacks the required-std
argument. Themandoc
utility assumes-std
even when it is not specified, but other implementations may not. - missing option string, using ""
- (man) The
OP
macro is invoked without any argument. An empty pair of square brackets is shown. - missing resource identifier, using ""
- (man) The
MT
orUR
macro is invoked without any argument. An empty pair of angle brackets is shown. - missing eqn box, using ""
- (eqn) A diacritic mark or a binary operator is found, but there is nothing to the left of it. An empty box is inserted.
Warnings related to bad macro arguments
- duplicate argument
- (mdoc) A
Bd
orBl
macro has more than one-compact
, more than one-offset
, or more than one-width
argument. All but the last instances of these arguments are ignored. - skipping duplicate argument
- (mdoc) An
An
macro has more than one-split
or-nosplit
argument. All but the first of these arguments are ignored. - skipping duplicate display type
- (mdoc) A
Bd
macro has more than one type argument; the first one is used. - skipping duplicate list type
- (mdoc) A
Bl
macro has more than one type argument; the first one is used. - skipping -width argument
- (mdoc) A
Bl
-column
,-diag
,-ohang
,-inset
, or-item
list has a-width
argument. That has no effect. - wrong number of cells
- In a line of a
Bl
-column
list, the number of tabs orTa
macros is less than the number expected from the list header line or exceeds the expected number by more than one. Missing cells remain empty, and all cells exceeding the number of columns are joined into one single cell. - unknown AT&T UNIX version
- (mdoc) An
At
macro has an invalid argument. It is used verbatim, with "AT&T UNIX " prefixed to it. - comma in function argument
- (mdoc) An argument of an
Fa
orFn
macro contains a comma; it should probably be split into two arguments. - parenthesis in function name
- (mdoc) The first argument of an
Fc
orFn
macro contains an opening or closing parenthesis; that's probably wrong, parentheses are added automatically. - unknown library name
- (mdoc, not on OpenBSD) An
Lb
macro has an unknown name argument and will be rendered as "library “name”". - invalid content in Rs block
- (mdoc) An
Rs
block contains plain text or non-% macros. The bogus content is left in the syntax tree. Formatting may be poor. - invalid Boolean argument
- (mdoc) An
Sm
macro has an argument other thanon
oroff
. The invalid argument is moved out of the macro, which leaves the macro empty, causing it to toggle the spacing mode. - argument contains two font escapes
- (roff) The second argument of a
char
request contains more than one font escape sequence. A wrong font may remain active after using the character. - unknown font, skipping request
- (man, tbl) A roff(7)
ft
request or a tbl(7)f
layout modifier has an unknown font argument. - odd number of characters in request
- (roff) A
tr
request contains an odd number of characters. The last character is mapped to the blank character.
Warnings related to plain text
- blank line in fill mode, using .sp
- (mdoc) The meaning of blank input lines is only well-defined in non-fill
mode: In fill mode, line breaks of text input lines are not supposed to be
significant. However, for compatibility with groff, blank lines in fill
mode are formatted like
sp
requests. To request a paragraph break, usePp
instead of a blank line. - tab in filled text
- (mdoc, man) The meaning of tab characters is only well-defined in non-fill mode: In fill mode, whitespace is not supposed to be significant on text input lines. As an implementation dependent choice, tab characters on text lines are passed through to the formatters in any case. Given that the text before the tab character will be filled, it is hard to predict which tab stop position the tab will advance to.
- new sentence, new line
- (mdoc) A new sentence starts in the middle of a text line. Start it on a new input line to help formatters produce correct spacing.
- invalid escape sequence
- (roff) An escape sequence has an invalid opening argument delimiter, lacks
the closing argument delimiter, the argument is of an invalid form, or it
is a character escape sequence with an invalid name. If the argument is
incomplete,
\*
and\n
expand to an empty string,\B
to the digit ‘0’, and\w
to the length of the incomplete argument. All other invalid escape sequences are ignored. - undefined escape, printing literally
- (roff) In an escape sequence, the first character right after the leading backslash is invalid. That character is printed literally, which is equivalent to ignoring the backslash.
- undefined string, using ""
- (roff) If a string is used without being defined before, its value is implicitly set to the empty string. However, defining strings explicitly before use keeps the code more readable.
Warnings related to tables
- tbl line starts with span
- (tbl) The first cell in a table layout line is a horizontal span
(‘
s
’). Data provided for this cell is ignored, and nothing is printed in the cell. - tbl column starts with span
- (tbl) The first line of a table layout specification requests a vertical
span (‘
^
’). Data provided for this cell is ignored, and nothing is printed in the cell. - skipping vertical bar in tbl layout
- (tbl) A table layout specification contains more than two consecutive vertical bars. A double bar is printed, all additional bars are discarded.
Errors related to tables
- non-alphabetic character in tbl options
- (tbl) The table options line contains a character other than a letter, blank, or comma where the beginning of an option name is expected. The character is ignored.
- skipping unknown tbl option
- (tbl) The table options line contains a string of letters that does not match any known option name. The word is ignored.
- missing tbl option argument
- (tbl) A table option that requires an argument is not followed by an opening parenthesis, or the opening parenthesis is immediately followed by a closing parenthesis. The option is ignored.
- wrong tbl option argument size
- (tbl) A table option argument contains an invalid number of characters. Both the option and the argument are ignored.
- empty tbl layout
- (tbl) A table layout specification is completely empty, specifying zero lines and zero columns. As a fallback, a single left-justified column is used.
- invalid character in tbl layout
- (tbl) A table layout specification contains a character that can neither be interpreted as a layout key character nor as a layout modifier, or a modifier precedes the first key. The invalid character is discarded.
- unmatched parenthesis in tbl layout
- (tbl) A table layout specification contains an opening parenthesis, but no matching closing parenthesis. The rest of the input line, starting from the parenthesis, has no effect.
- ignoring excessive spacing in tbl layout
- (tbl) A spacing modifier in a table layout is unreasonably large. The default spacing of 3n is used instead.
- tbl without any data cells
- (tbl) A table does not contain any data cells. It will probably produce no output.
- ignoring data in spanned tbl cell
- (tbl) A table cell is marked as a horizontal span
(‘
s
’) or vertical span (‘^
’) in the table layout, but it contains data. The data is ignored. - ignoring extra tbl data cells
- (tbl) A data line contains more cells than the corresponding layout line. The data in the extra cells is ignored.
- data block open at end of tbl
- (tbl) A data block is opened with
T{
, but never closed with a matchingT}
. The remaining data lines of the table are all put into one cell, and any remaining cells stay empty.
Errors related to roff, mdoc, and man code
- duplicate prologue macro
- (mdoc) One of the prologue macros occurs more than once. The last instance overrides all previous ones.
- skipping late title macro
- (mdoc) The
Dt
macro appears after the first non-prologue macro. Traditional formatters cannot handle this because they write the page header before parsing the document body. Even though this technical restriction does not apply tomandoc
, traditional semantics is preserved. The late macro is discarded including its arguments. - input stack limit exceeded, infinite loop?
- (roff) Explicit recursion limits are implemented for the following
features, in order to prevent infinite loops:
- expansion of nested escape sequences including expansion of strings and number registers,
- expansion of nested user-defined macros,
- and
so
file inclusion.
- skipping bad character
- (mdoc, man, roff) The input file contains a byte that is not a printable ascii(7) character. The message mentions the character number. The offending byte is replaced with a question mark (‘?’). Consider editing the input file to replace the byte with an ASCII transliteration of the intended character.
- skipping unknown macro
- (mdoc, man, roff) The first identifier on a request or macro line is neither recognized as a roff(7) request, nor as a user-defined macro, nor, respectively, as an mdoc(7) or man(7) macro. It may be mistyped or unsupported. The request or macro is discarded including its arguments.
- skipping request outside macro
- (roff) A
shift
orreturn
request occurs outside any macro definition and has no effect. - skipping insecure request
- (roff) An input file attempted to run a shell command or to read or write an external file. Such attempts are denied for security reasons.
- skipping item outside list
- (mdoc, eqn) An
It
macro occurs outside anyBl
list, or an eqn(7)above
delimiter occurs outside any pile. It is discarded including its arguments. - skipping column outside column list
- (mdoc) A
Ta
macro occurs outside anyBl
-column
block. It is discarded including its arguments. - skipping end of block that is not open
- (mdoc, man, eqn, tbl, roff) Various syntax elements can only be used to
explicitly close blocks that have previously been opened. An
mdoc(7) block closing macro, a
man(7)
ME
,RE
orUE
macro, an eqn(7) right delimiter or closing brace, or the end of an equation, table, or roff(7) conditional request is encountered but no matching block is open. The offending request or macro is discarded. - fewer RS blocks open, skipping
- (man) The
RE
macro is invoked with an argument, but less than the specified number ofRS
blocks is open. TheRE
macro is discarded. - inserting missing end of block
- (mdoc, tbl) Various mdoc(7) macros as well as tables require explicit closing by dedicated macros. A block that doesn't support bad nesting ends before all of its children are properly closed. The open child nodes are closed implicitly.
- appending missing end of block
- (mdoc, man, eqn, tbl, roff) At the end of the document, an explicit
mdoc(7) block, a
man(7) next-line scope or
MT
,RS
orUR
block, an equation, table, or roff(7) conditional or ignore block is still open. The open block is closed implicitly. - escaped character not allowed in a name
- (roff) Macro, string and register identifiers consist of printable,
non-whitespace ASCII characters. Escape sequences and characters and
strings expressed in terms of them cannot form part of a name. The first
argument of an
am
,as
,de
,ds
,nr
, orrr
request, or any argument of anrm
request, or the name of a request or user defined macro being called, is terminated by an escape sequence. In the cases ofas
,ds
, andnr
, the request has no effect at all. In the cases ofam
,de
,rr
, andrm
, what was parsed up to this point is used as the arguments to the request, and the rest of the input line is discarded including the escape sequence. When parsing for a request or a user-defined macro name to be called, only the escape sequence is discarded. The characters preceding it are used as the request or macro name, the characters following it are used as the arguments to the request or macro. - using macro argument outside macro
- (roff) The escape sequence \$ occurs outside any macro definition and expands to the empty string.
- argument number is not numeric
- (roff) The argument of the escape sequence \$ is not a digit; the escape sequence expands to the empty string.
- NOT IMPLEMENTED: Bd -file
- (mdoc) For security reasons, the
Bd
macro does not support the-file
argument. By requesting the inclusion of a sensitive file, a malicious document might otherwise trick a privileged user into inadvertently displaying the file on the screen, revealing the file content to bystanders. The argument is ignored including the file name following it. - skipping display without arguments
- (mdoc) A
Bd
block macro does not have any arguments. The block is discarded, and the block content is displayed in whatever mode was active before the block. - missing list type, using -item
- (mdoc) A
Bl
macro fails to specify the list type. - argument is not numeric, using 1
- (roff) The argument of a
ce
request is not a number. - argument is not a character
- (roff) The first argument of a
char
request is neither a single ASCII character nor a single character escape sequence. The request is ignored including all its arguments. - missing manual name, using ""
- (mdoc) The first call to
Nm
, or any call in the NAME section, lacks the required argument. - uname(3) system call failed, using UNKNOWN
- (mdoc) The
Os
macro is called without arguments, and the uname(3) system call failed. As a workaround,mandoc
can be compiled with-D
OSNAME="\"
string\""
. - unknown standard specifier
- (mdoc) An
St
macro has an unknown argument and is discarded. - skipping request without numeric argument
- (roff, eqn) An
it
request or an eqn(7)size
orgsize
statement has a non-numeric or negative argument or no argument at all. The invalid request or statement is ignored. - excessive shift
- (roff) The argument of a
shift
request is larger than the number of arguments of the macro that is currently being executed. All macro arguments are deleted and \n(.$ is set to zero. - NOT IMPLEMENTED: .so with absolute path or ".."
- (roff) For security reasons,
mandoc
allowsso
file inclusion requests only with relative paths and only without ascending to any parent directory. By requesting the inclusion of a sensitive file, a malicious document might otherwise trick a privileged user into inadvertently displaying the file on the screen, revealing the file content to bystanders.mandoc
only shows the path as it appears behindso
. - .so request failed
- (roff) Servicing a
so
request requires reading an external file, but the file could not be opened.mandoc
only shows the path as it appears behindso
. - skipping all arguments
- (mdoc, man, eqn, roff) An
mdoc(7)
Bt
,Ed
,Ef
,Ek
,El
,Lp
,Pp
,Re
,Rs
, orUd
macro, anIt
macro in a list that don't support item heads, a man(7)LP
,P
, orPP
macro, an eqn(7)EQ
orEN
macro, or a roff(7)br
,fi
, ornf
request or ‘..’ block closing request is invoked with at least one argument. All arguments are ignored. - skipping excess arguments
- (mdoc, man, roff) A macro or request is invoked with too many arguments:
Fo
,MT
,PD
,RS
,UR
,ft
, orsp
with more than one argumentAn
with another argument after-split
or-nosplit
RE
with more than one argument or with a non-integer argumentOP
or a request of thede
family with more than two argumentsDt
with more than three argumentsTH
with more than five argumentsBd
,Bk
, orBl
with invalid arguments
Unsupported features
- input too large
- (mdoc, man) Currently,
mandoc
cannot handle input files larger than its arbitrary size limit of 2^31 bytes (2 Gigabytes). Since useful manuals are always small, this is not a problem in practice. Parsing is aborted as soon as the condition is detected. - unsupported control character
- (roff) An ASCII control character supported by other
roff(7) implementations but not by
mandoc
was found in an input file. It is replaced by a question mark. - unsupported escape sequence
- (roff) An input file contains an escape sequence supported by GNU troff or
Heirloom troff but not by
mandoc
, and it is likely that this will cause information loss or considerable misformatting. - unsupported roff request
- (roff) An input file contains a
roff(7) request supported by GNU troff or Heirloom troff but not by
mandoc
, and it is likely that this will cause information loss or considerable misformatting. - eqn delim option in tbl
- (eqn, tbl) The options line of a table defines equation delimiters. Any equation source code contained in the table will be printed unformatted.
- unsupported table layout modifier
- (tbl) A table layout specification contains an
‘
m
’ modifier. The modifier is discarded. - ignoring macro in table
- (tbl, mdoc, man) A table contains an invocation of an mdoc(7) or man(7) macro or of an undefined macro. The macro is ignored, and its arguments are handled as if they were a text line.
- skipping tbl in -Tman mode
- (mdoc, tbl) An input file contains the
TS
macro. This message is only generated in-T
man
output mode, where tbl(7) input is not supported. - skipping eqn in -Tman mode
- (mdoc, eqn) An input file contains the
EQ
macro. This message is only generated in-T
man
output mode, where eqn(7) input is not supported.
Bad command line arguments
- bad command line argument
- The argument following one of the
-IKMmOTW
command line options is invalid, or a file given as a command line argument cannot be opened. - duplicate command line argument
- The
-I
command line option was specified twice. - option has a superfluous value
- An argument to the
-O
option has a value but does not accept one. - missing option value
- An argument to the
-O
option has no argument but requires one. - bad option value
- An argument to the
-O
indent
orwidth
option has an invalid value. - duplicate option value
- The same
-O
option is specified more than once. - no such tag
- The
-O
tag
option was specified but the tag was not found in any of the displayed manual pages. - -Tmarkdown unsupported for man(7) input
- (man) The
-T
markdown
option was specified but an input file uses the man(7) language. No output is produced for that input file.
SEE ALSO
apropos(1), man(1), eqn(7), man(7), mandoc_char(7), mdoc(7), roff(7), tbl(7)
HISTORY
The mandoc
utility first appeared in
OpenBSD 4.8. The option -I
appeared in OpenBSD 5.2, and
-aCcfhKklMSsw
in OpenBSD
5.7.
AUTHORS
The mandoc
utility was written by
Kristaps Dzonsons
<kristaps@bsd.lv> and
is maintained by Ingo Schwarze
<schwarze@openbsd.org>.