man
—
display the on-line manual pages (aka “man
pages”)
man |
[-acw |-h ]
[-C file]
[-M path]
[-m path]
[-S srch]
[[-s ] section]
name ... |
man |
[-C file]
-f command
... |
man |
[-C file]
-k keyword
... |
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
.
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.
- 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.
- /etc/man.conf
- default man configuration file.
man
conforms to X/Open Commands and
Utilities Issue 5 (“XCU5”).
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.