User Commands man(1)
NAME
man - find and display reference manual pages
SYNOPSIS
man [-] [-adFlrt] [-M path] [-T macro-package] [-s section] name...
man [-M path] -k keyword...
man [-M path] -f file...
DESCRIPTION
The man command displays information from the reference
manuals. It displays complete manual pages that you select
by name, or one-line summaries selected either by keyword
(-k), or by the name of an associated file (-f). If no
manual page is located, man prints an error message.
Source Format
Reference Manual pages are marked up with either nroff (see
nroff(1)) or SGML (Standard Generalized Markup Language)
tags (see sgml(5)). The man command recognizes the type of
markup and processes the file accordingly. The various
source files are kept in separate directories depending on
the type of markup.
Location of Manual Pages
The online Reference Manual page directories are convention-
ally located in /usr/share/man. The nroff sources are
located in the /usr/share/man/man* directories. The SGML
sources are located in the /usr/share/man/sman* directories.
Each directory corresponds to a section of the manual. Since
these directories are optionally installed, they might not
reside on your host. You might have to mount /usr/share/man
from a host on which they do reside.
If there are preformatted, up-to-date versions in the
corresponding cat* or fmt* directories, man simply displays
or prints those versions. If the preformatted version of
interest is out of date or missing, man reformats it prior
to display and stores the preformatted version if cat* or
fmt* is writable. The windex database is not updated. See
catman(1M). If directories for the preformatted versions are
not provided, man reformats a page whenever it is requested.
man uses a temporary file to store the formatted text during
display.
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User Commands man(1)
If the standard output is not a terminal, or if the `-' flag
is given, man pipes its output through cat(1). Otherwise,
man pipes its output through more(1) to handle paging and
underlining on the screen.
OPTIONS
The following options are supported:
-a Shows all manual pages matching name
within the MANPATH search path. Manual
pages are displayed in the order found.
-d Debugs. Displays what a section-
specifier evaluates to, method used for
searching, and paths searched by man.
-f file ... man attempts to locate manual pages
related to any of the given files. It
strips the leading path name components
from each file, and then prints one-line
summaries containing the resulting
basename or names. This option also uses
the windex database.
-F Forces man to search all directories
specified by MANPATH or the man.cf file,
rather than using the windex lookup
database. This option is useful if the
database is not up to date and it has
been made the default behavior of the
man command. The option therefore does
not have to be invoked and is documented
here for reference only.
-k keyword ... Prints out one-line summaries from the
windex database (table of contents) that
contain any of the given keywords. The
windex database is created using
catman(1M).
-l Lists all manual pages found matching
name within the search path.
-M path Specifies an alternate search path for
manual pages. path is a colon-separated
list of directories that contain manual
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User Commands man(1)
page directory subtrees. For example, if
path is /usr/share/man:/usr/local/man,
man searches for name in the standard
location, and then /usr/local/man. When
used with the -k or -f options, the -M
option must appear first. Each directory
in the path is assumed to contain sub-
directories of the form man* or sman* ,
one for each section. This option over-
rides the MANPATH environment variable.
-r Reformats the manual page, but does not
display it. This replaces the man - -t
name combination.
-s section ... Specifies sections of the manual for man
to search. The directories searched for
name are limited to those specified by
section. section can be a numerical
digit, perhaps followed by one or more
letters to match the desired section of
the manual, for example, "3libucb".
Also, section can be a word, for exam-
ple, local, new, old, public. section
can also be a letter. To specify multi-
ple sections, separate each section with
a comma. This option overrides the MAN-
PATH environment variable and the man.cf
file. See Search Path below for an
explanation of how man conducts its
search.
-t man arranges for the specified manual
pages to be troffed to a suitable raster
output device (see troff(1)). If both
the - and -t flags are given, man
updates the troffed versions of each
named name (if necessary), but does not
display them.
-T macro-package Formats manual pages using macro-package
rather than the standard -man macros
defined in /usr/share/lib/tmac/an. See
Search Path under USAGE for a complete
explanation of the default search path
order.
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User Commands man(1)
OPERANDS
The following operand is supported:
name The name of a standard utility or a keyword.
USAGE
The usage of man is described below:
Manual Page Sections
Entries in the reference manuals are organized into sec-
tions. A section name consists of a major section name, typ-
ically a single digit, optionally followed by a subsection
name, typically one or more letters. An unadorned major sec-
tion name, for example, "9", does not act as an abbreviation
for the subsections of that name, such as "9e", "9f", or
"9s". That is, each subsection must be searched separately
by man -s. Each section contains descriptions apropos to a
particular reference category, with subsections refining
these distinctions. See the intro manual pages for an expla-
nation of the classification used in this release.
Search Path
Before searching for a given name, man constructs a list of
candidate directories and sections. man searches for name in
the directories specified by the MANPATH environment vari-
able.
In the absence of MANPATH, man constructs its search path
based upon the PATH environment variable, primarily by sub-
stituting man for the last component of the PATH element.
Special provisions are added to account for unique charac-
teristics of directories such as /sbin, /usr/ucb,
/usr/xpg4/bin, and others. If the file argument contains a /
character, the dirname portion of the argument is used in
place of PATH elements to construct the search path.
Within the manual page directories, man confines its search
to the sections specified in the following order:
o sections specified on the command line with the -s
option
o sections embedded in the MANPATH environment vari-
able
o sections specified in the man.cf file for each
directory specified in the MANPATH environment
variable
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User Commands man(1)
If none of the above exist, man searches each directory in
the manual page path, and displays the first matching manual
page found.
The man.cf file has the following format:
MANSECTS=section[,section]...
Lines beginning with `#' and blank lines are considered com-
ments, and are ignored. Each directory specified in MANPATH
can contain a manual page configuration file, specifying the
default search order for that directory.
FORMATING MANUAL PAGES
Manual pages are marked up in nroff(1) or sgml(5). Nroff
manual pages are processed by nroff(1) or troff(1) with the
-man macro package. Please refer to man(5) for information
on macro usage. SGML-tagged manual pages are processed by an
SGML parser and passed to the formatter.
Preprocessing Nroff Manual Pages
When formatting an nroff manual page, man examines the first
line to determine whether it requires special processing. If
the first line is a string of the form:
'\" X
where X is separated from the `"' by a single SPACE and con-
sists of any combination of characters in the following
list, man pipes its input to troff(1) or nroff(1) through
the corresponding preprocessors.
e eqn(1), or neqn for nroff
r refer(1)
t tbl(1)
v vgrind(1)
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User Commands man(1)
If eqn or neqn is invoked, it automatically reads the file
/usr/pub/eqnchar (see eqnchar(5)). If nroff(1) is invoked,
col(1) is automatically used.
Referring to Other nroff Manual Pages
If the first line of the nroff manual page is a reference to
another manual page entry fitting the pattern:
.so man*/sourcefile
man processes the indicated file in place of the current
one. The reference must be expressed as a path name relative
to the root of the manual page directory subtree.
When the second or any subsequent line starts with .so, man
ignores it; troff(1) or nroff(1) processes the request in
the usual manner.
Processing SGML Manual Pages
Manual pages are identified as being marked up in SGML by
the presence of the string pipe.ps
This is an alternative to using man -t, which sends the man
page to the default printer, if the user wants a postscript
file version of the man page.
Example 2 Creating a Text Version of a man page
The following example creates the pipe(2) man page in ascii
text:
man pipe.2 col -x -b > pipe.text
This is an alternative to using man -t, which sends the man
page to the default printer, if the user wants a text file
version of the man page.
EXIT STATUS
The following exit values are returned:
0 Successful completion.
>0 An error occurred.
FILES
/usr/share/man
Root of the standard manual page directory subtree
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/usr/share/man/man?/*
Unformatted nroff manual entries
/usr/share/man/sman?/*
Unformatted SGML manual entries
/usr/share/man/cat?/*
nroffed manual entries
/usr/share/man/fmt?/*
troffed manual entries
/usr/share/man/windex
Table of contents and keyword database
/usr/share/lib/tmac/an
Standard -man macro package
/usr/share/lib/sgml/locale/C/dtd/*
SGML document type definition files
/usr/share/lib/sgml/locale/C/solbook/*
SGML style sheet and entity definitions directories
/usr/share/lib/pub/eqnchar
Standard definitions for eqn and neqn
man.cf
Default search order by section
ATRIBUTES
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User Commands man(1)
See attributes(5) for descriptions of the following attri-
butes:
ATRIBUTE TYPE ATRIBUTE VALUE
Availability SUNWdoc
CSI Enabled, see NOTES.
Interface Stability Committed
Standard See standards(5).
SEE ALSO
apropos(1), cat(1), col(1), dpost(1), eqn(1), more(1),
nroff(1), refer(1), tbl(1), troff(1), vgrind(1), whatis(1),
catman(1M), attributes(5), environ(5), eqnchar(5), man(5),
sgml(5), standards(5)
NOTES
The -f and -k options use the windex database, which is
created by catman(1M).
The man command is CSI-capable. However, some utilities
invoked by the man command, namely, troff, eqn, neqn, refer,
tbl, and vgrind, are not verified to be CSI-capable. Because
of this, the man command with the -t option can not handle
non-EUC data. Also, using the man command to display man
pages that require special processing through eqn, neqn,
refer, tbl, or vgrind can not be CSI-capable.
BUGS
The manual is supposed to be reproducible either on a photo-
typesetter or on an ASCI terminal. However, on a terminal
some information (indicated by font changes, for instance)
is lost.
Some dumb terminals cannot process the vertical motions pro-
duced by the e (see eqn(1)) preprocessing flag. To prevent
garbled output on these terminals, when you use e, also use
t, to invoke col(1) implicitly. This workaround has the
disadvantage of eliminating superscripts and subscripts,
even on those terminals that can display them. Control-q
clears a terminal that gets confused by eqn(1) output.
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