NAME
man
—
display manual pages
SYNOPSIS
man |
[-acfhklw ] [-C
file] [-I
os =name]
[-K encoding]
[-M path]
[-m path]
[-O
option=value]
[-S subsection]
[-s section]
[-T output]
[-W level]
[section] name ... |
DESCRIPTION
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 of the manual pages for a specified section and name combination. Normally, only the first manual 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.
-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. This overrides
any earlier
-k
and-l
options. -I
os
=name- Override the default operating system name for the
mdoc(7)
Os
and for the man(7)TH
macro. -h
- Display only the SYNOPSIS lines of the requested manual pages. Implies
-a
and-c
. -K
encoding- Specify the input encoding. The supported encoding
arguments are
us-ascii
,iso-8859-1
, andutf-8
. By default, the encoding is automatically detected as described in the mandoc(1) manual. -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. This overrides any earlier
-f
and-l
options. -l
- A synonym for
mandoc(1)
-a
. The name arguments are interpreted as filenames. No search is done and file, path, section, and subsection are ignored. This overrides any earlier-f
,-k
, and-w
options. -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 variableMANPATH
. The subdirectories to be searched, and their search order, are specified by the “_subdir” line in theman
configuration file. -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 theMANPATH
environment variable. The subdirectories to be searched, and their search order, are specified by the “_subdir” line in theman
configuration file. -O
option=value- Comma-separated output options. For each output format, the available options are described in the mandoc(1) manual.
-S
subsection- Restricts the directories that
man
will search to those of a specific 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 - Restricts the directories that
man
will search to a specific section. The currently available sections are:- 1
- General commands (tools and utilities).
- 2
- System calls and error numbers.
- 3
- Libraries.
- 3f
- Fortran programmer's reference guide.
- 3p
- perl(1) programmer's reference guide.
- 4
- Device drivers.
- 5
- File formats.
- 6
- Games.
- 7
- Miscellaneous.
- 8
- System maintenance and operation commands.
- 9
- Kernel internals.
- X11
- An alias for X11R6.
- X11R6
- X Window System.
- local
- Pages located in /usr/local.
- n
- Tcl/Tk commands.
The
man
configuration file, man.conf(5), specifies the possible section values, and their search order. Additional sections may be specified. -T
output- Select the output format. The default is
locale
. The other output modesascii
,html
,lint
,man
,pdf
,ps
,tree
, andutf8
are described in the mandoc(1) manual. -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
warning
,error
, orunsupp
;all
is an alias forwarning
. By default,man
is silent. See the mandoc(1) manual for details. -w
- List the pathnames of the manual pages which
man
would display for the specified section and name combination.
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, and at
least one of them is selected, only the newer one is used. However, if both
the -a
and the -w
options
are specified, both file names are printed.
ENVIRONMENT
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 variableMACHINE
to the name of a specific architecture, or with the-S
option.MACHINE
is case insensitive. MANPAGER
- Any non-empty value of the environment variable
MANPAGER
will be 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, and environment variables. MANPATH
- The standard search path used by
man
may be overridden by specifying a path in theMANPATH
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, are specified by the “_subdir” line in theman
configuration file. PAGER
- Specifies the pagination program to use when
MANPAGER
is not defined. If neither PAGER nor MANPAGER is defined, more(1)-s
will be used.
FILES
- /etc/man.conf
- default man configuration file
EXIT STATUS
The man
utility exits 0 on success,
and >0 if an error occurs.
SEE ALSO
apropos(1), intro(1), whatis(1), whereis(1), intro(2), intro(3), intro(4), intro(5), man.conf(5), intro(6), intro(7), mdoc(7), intro(8), intro(9)
STANDARDS
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.
HISTORY
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; and
-s
and -S
in
OpenBSD 2.3.