NAME
man - display reference manual pages; find reference pages
by keyword
SYNOPSIS
man [-] [-t] [-M path] [-T macro-package] [[section] title
...] ...
man [-M path] -k keyword ...
man [-M path] -f filename ...
DESCRIPTION
man displays information from the reference manuals. It can
display complete manual pages that you select by title, or
one-line summaries selected either by keyword (-k), or by
the name of an associated file (-f).
A section, when given, applies to the titles that follow it
on the command line (up to the next section, if any). man
looks in the indicated section of the manual for those
titles. section is either a digit (perhaps followed by a
single letter indicating the type of manual page), or one of
the words new, local, old, or public. The abbreviations n,
l, o and p are also allowed. If section is omitted, man
searches all reference sections (giving preference to com-
mands over functions) and prints the first manual page it
finds. If no manual page is located, man prints an error
message.
The reference page sources are typically located in the
/usr/man/man? directories. Since these directories are
optionally installed, they may not reside on your host; you
may have to mount /usr/man from a host on which they do
reside. If there are preformatted, up-to-date versions in
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interest is out of date or missing, man reformats it prior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. If directories for the preformatted versions
are not provided, man reformats a page whenever it is
requested; it uses a temporary file to store the formatted
text during display.
If the standard output is not a terminal, or if the `-' flag
is given, man pipes its output through cat(1V). Otherwise,
man pipes its output through more(1) to handle paging and
underlining on the screen.
OPTIONS
-t man arranges for the specified manual pages to be
troffed to a suitable raster output device (see
troff(1) or vtroff(1)). If both the - and -t flags are
given, man updates the troffed versions of each named
title (if necessary), but does not display them.
-M path
Change the search path for manual pages. path is a
colon-separated list of directories that contain manual
page directory subtrees. For example,
/usr/man/u_man:/usr/man/a_man makes man search in the
standard System V locations. When used with the -k or
-f options, the -M option must appear first. Each
directory in the path is assumed to contain subdirec-
tories of the form man[1-8l-p].
-T macro-package
man uses macro-package rather than the standard -man
macros defined in /usr/lib/tmac/tmac.an for formatting
manual pages.
-k keyword ...
man prints out one-line summaries from the whatis data-
base (table of contents) that contain any of the given
keywords. The whatis database is created using the
catman(8) command with the -w option.
-f filename ...
man attempts to locate manual pages related to any of
the given filenames. It strips the leading pathname
components from each filename, and then prints one-line
summaries containing the resulting basename or names.
This option also uses the whatis database.
MANUAL PAGES
Manual pages are troff(1)/nroff(1) source files prepared
with the -man macro package. Refer to man(7), or Formatting
Documents for more information.
When formatting a manual page, man examines the first line
to determine whether it requires special processing.
Referring to Other Manual Pages
If the first line of the 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 pathname 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.
Preprocessing Manual Pages
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)
If eqn or neqn is invoked, it will automatically read the
file /usr/pub/eqnchar (see eqnchar(7)). If nroff(1) is
invoked, col(1V) is automatically used.
ENVIRONMENT
MANPATH If set, its value overrides /usr/man as the
default search path. (The -M flag, in turn,
overrides this value.)
PAGER A program to use for interactively delivering
man's output to the screen. If not set,
`more -s' (see more(1)) is used.
TCAT The name of the program to use to display
troffed manual pages. If not set, `lpr -t'
(see lpr(1)) is used.
TROFF The name of the formatter to use when the -t
flag is given. If not set, troff is used.
FILES
/usr/[share]/man root of the standard manual
page directory subtree
/usr/[share]/man/man?/* unformatted manual entries
/usr/[share]/man/cat?/* nroffed manual entries
/usr/[share]/man/fmt?/* troffed manual entries
/usr/[share]/man/whatis table of contents and keyword
database
/usr/[share]/lib/tmac/tmac.an standard -man macro package
/usr/pub/eqnchar
SEE ALSO
apropos(1), cat(1V), col(1V), eqn(1), lpr(1), more(1),
nroff(1), refer(1), tbl(1), troff(1), vgrind(1), vtroff(1),
whatis(1), eqnchar(7), man(7), catman(8)
NOTES
Because troff is not 8-bit clean, man has not been made 8-
bit clean.
The -f and -k options use the /usr/man/whatis database,
which is created by catman(8).
BUGS
The manual is supposed to be reproducible either on a photo-
typesetter or on an ASCII terminal. However, on a terminal
some information (indicated by font changes, for instance)
is necessarily lost.
Some dumb terminals cannot process the vertical motions pro-
duced by the e (eqn(1)) preprocessing flag. To prevent gar-
bled output on these terminals, when you use e also use t,
to invoke col(1V) implicitly. This workaround has the
disadvantage of eliminating superscripts and subscripts -
even on those terminals that can display them. CTRL-Q will
clear a terminal that gets confused by eqn(1) output.