man —
display
manual pages
man |
[-acfhklw]
[-C
file]
[-M
path]
[-m
path]
[-S
subsection]
[[-s]
section]
name ... |
The
man utility displays the manual pages entitled
name. Pages may be selected according to a
specific category (
section) or machine
architecture (
subsection).
The options are as follows:
-
-
- -a
- Display all matching manual pages. Normally, only the first
page found is displayed.
-
-
- -C
file
- Use the specified file
instead of the default configuration file. This permits users to configure
their own manual environment. See
man.conf(5) for a
description of the contents of this file.
-
-
- -c
- Copy the manual 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.
When using -c, most terminal devices are unable
to show the markup. To print the output of
man to the terminal with markup but without
using a pager, pipe it to ul(1).
To remove the markup, pipe the output to
col(1)
-b instead.
-
-
- -f
- A synonym for
whatis(1). It searches for
name in manual page names and displays
the header lines from all matching pages. The search is case insensitive
and matches whole words only.
-
-
- -h
- Display only the SYNOPSIS lines of the requested manual
pages. Implies -a and
-c.
-
-
- -k
- A synonym for
apropos(1). Instead of
name, an expression can be provided using
the syntax described in the
apropos(1) manual. By
default, it displays the header lines of all matching pages.
-
-
- -l
- A synonym for
mandoc(1). The
name arguments are interpreted as
filenames. No search is done and file,
path,
section,
subsection, and
-w are ignored. This option implies
-a.
-
-
- -M
path
- Override the list of standard directories which
man searches for manual pages. The supplied
path must be a colon
(‘
:
’) separated list of directories.
This search path may also be set using the environment variable
MANPATH
.
-
-
- -m
path
- Augment the list of standard directories which
man searches for manual 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.
-
-
- -S
subsection
- Only show pages for the specified
machine(1) architecture.
subsection is case insensitive.
By default manual pages for all architectures are installed. Therefore this
option can be used to view pages for one architecture whilst using
another.
This option overrides the
MACHINE
environment variable.
-
-
- [-s]
section
- Only select manuals from the specified
section. The currently available sections
are:
- 1
- General commands (tools and utilities).
- 2
- System calls and error numbers.
- 3
- Library functions.
- 3p
- perl(1)
programmer's reference guide.
- 4
- Device drivers.
- 5
- File formats.
- 6
- Games.
- 7
- Miscellaneous information.
- 8
- System maintenance and operation commands.
- 9
- Kernel internals.
If not specified and a match is found in more than one section, the first
match is selected from the following list: 1, 8, 6, 2, 3, 5, 7, 4, 9,
3p.
-
-
- -w
- List the pathnames of all matching manual pages instead of
displaying any of them.
The options
-IKOTW are also supported and are
documented in
mandoc(1). The
options
-fkl are mutually exclusive and override
each other.
Guidelines for writing man pages can be found in
mdoc(7).
If both a formatted and an unformatted version of the same manual page, for
example
cat1/foo.0 and
man1/foo.1, exist in the same directory, only the
unformatted version is used.
-
-
MACHINE
- As some manual 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, or with the
-S option.
MACHINE
is case insensitive.
-
-
- Any non-empty value of the environment variable
MANPAGER
is used instead of the
standard pagination program,
more(1). If
less(1) is used, the
interactive :t command can be used to go to
the definitions of various terms, for example command line options,
command modifiers, internal commands, environment variables, function
names, preprocessor macros,
errno(2) values, and some
other emphasized words. Some terms may have defining text at more than one
place. In that case, the
less(1) interactive commands
t and T can be
used to move to the next and to the previous place providing information
about the term last searched for with
:t.
-
-
MANPATH
- The standard search path used by
man may be changed by specifying a path in
the
MANPATH
environment variable. The
format of the path is a colon (‘:
’)
separated list of directories. Invalid paths are ignored. Overridden by
-M, ignored if
-l is specified.
If MANPATH
begins with a colon, it is
appended to the default list; if it ends with a colon, it is prepended to
the default list; or if it contains two adjacent colons, the standard
search path is inserted between the colons. If none of these conditions
are met, it overrides the standard search path.
-
-
- Specifies the pagination program to use when
MANPAGER
is not defined. If neither
PAGER nor MANPAGER is defined,
more(1)
-s is used.
- /etc/man.conf
- default man configuration file
The
man utility exits 0 on success,
and >0 if an error occurs. See
mandoc(1) for details.
Format a page for pasting extracts into an email message — avoid printing
any UTF-8 characters, reduce the width to ease quoting in replies, and remove
markup:
$ man -T ascii -O width=65 pledge | col
-b
Read a typeset page in a PDF viewer:
$ MANPAGER=mupdf man -T pdf lpd
apropos(1),
col(1),
mandoc(1),
ul(1),
whereis(1),
man.conf(5),
mdoc(7)
The
man utility is compliant with the
IEEE Std 1003.1-2008
(“POSIX.1”) specification.
The flags
[
-aCcfhIKlMmOSsTWw], as
well as the environment variables
MACHINE
,
MANPAGER
, and
MANPATH
, are extensions to that
specification.
A
man command first appeared in
Version 3 AT&T UNIX.
The
-w option first appeared in
Version 7 AT&T UNIX;
-f and
-k in
4BSD;
-M in
4.3BSD;
-a in
4.3BSD-Tahoe;
-c and
-m in
4.3BSD-Reno;
-h in
4.3BSD-Net/2;
-C in
NetBSD 1.0;
-s and
-S in
OpenBSD 2.3; and
-I,
-K,
-l,
-O, and
-W in
OpenBSD 5.7. The
-T
option first appeared in
AT&T System III
UNIX and was also added in
OpenBSD 5.7.