.\" Man page for man .\" .\" Copyright (c) 1990, 1991, John W. Eaton. .\" .\" You may distribute under the terms of the GNU General Public .\" License as specified in the README file that comes with the man 1.0 .\" distribution. .\" .\" John W. Eaton .\" jwe@che.utexas.edu .\" Department of Chemical Engineering .\" The University of Texas at Austin .\" Austin, Texas 78712 .\" .\" $FreeBSD$ .\" .Dd December 3, 2005 .Dt MAN 1 .Os .Sh NAME .Nm man .Nd format and display the on-line manual pages .Sh SYNOPSIS .Nm .Op Fl adfhkotw .Op Fl m Ar arch Ns Op : Ns Ar machine .Op Fl p Ar string .Op Fl M Ar path .Op Fl P Ar pager .Op Fl S Ar list .Op Ar section .Ar name ... .Sh DESCRIPTION The .Nm utility formats and displays the on-line manual pages. This version knows about the .Ev MANPATH and .Ev PAGER environment variables, so you can have your own set(s) of personal man pages and choose whatever program you like to display the formatted pages. If .Ar section is specified, .Nm only looks in that section of the manual. You may also specify the order to search the sections for entries and which preprocessors to run on the source files via command line options or environment variables. If enabled by the system administrator, formatted man pages will also be compressed with the .Dq Li "%compress%" command to save space. .Pp The options are as follows: .Bl -tag -width ".Fl P Ar pager" .It Fl M Ar path Specify an alternate manpath. By default, .Nm uses .Xr manpath 1 (which is built into the .Nm binary) to determine the path to search. This option overrides the .Ev MANPATH environment variable. .It Fl P Ar pager Specify which pager to use. By default, .Nm uses .Dq Li "%pager%" . This option overrides the .Ev PAGER environment variable. .It Fl S Ar list List is a colon separated list of manual sections to search. This option overrides the .Ev MANSECT environment variable. .It Fl a By default, .Nm will exit after displaying the first manual page it finds. Using this option forces .Nm to display all the manual pages that match .Ar name , not just the first. .It Fl d Do not actually display the man pages, but do print gobs of debugging information. .It Fl f Equivalent to .Nm whatis . .It Fl h Print a help message and exit. .It Fl k Equivalent to .Nm apropos . .It Fl m Ar arch Ns Op : Ns Ar machine As some manual pages are intended only for specific architectures and machine types, .Nm searches any subdirectories, with the same name as the current machine type and architecture, in every directory which it searches. Machine specific areas are checked before architecture specific areas, and architecture specific areas are checked before general areas. For example, for .Dq Li i386:pc98 , the following subdirectories will be searched for section 8 manpages, in order: .Pa man8/pc98, man8/i386 , and .Pa man8 . .Pp The current machine type may be overridden using this option or by setting the environment variable .Ev MACHINE to the name of a specific machine. The current architecture may be overridden using this option or by setting the environment variable .Ev MACHINE_ARCH to the name of a specific architecture. This option overrides the .Ev MACHINE and .Ev MACHINE_ARCH environment variables. A .Ar machine component, if omitted, defaults to .Ar arch . .It Fl o Look for original, non-localized manpages only. .Pp By default, .Nm searches for a localized manpage in a set of locale subdirectories of each .Xr manpath 1 component. .Pp Locale name is taken from the first of three environment variables with a nonempty value: .Ev LC_ALL , LC_CTYPE , or .Ev LANG , in the specified order. .Pp If the value could not be determined, or is not a valid locale name, then only non-localized manpage will be looked up. .Pp Otherwise, .Nm will search in the following subdirectories, in the order of precedence: .Pp .Bl -item -offset indent -compact .Sm off .It .Pa _ . .It .Pa . .It .Pa en . .Sm on .El .Pp For example, for the .Dq Li de_DE.ISO8859-1 locale, .Nm will search in the following subdirectories of the .Pa /usr/share/man manpath component: .Pp .Bl -item -offset indent -compact .It .Pa /usr/share/man/de_DE.ISO8859-1 .It .Pa /usr/share/man/de.ISO8859-1 .It .Pa /usr/share/man/en.ISO8859-1 .El .Pp Finally, if the search of localized manpage fails, it will be looked up in the default .Pa /usr/share/man directory. .It Fl p Ar string Specify the sequence of preprocessors to run before .Xr nroff 1 or .Xr troff 1 . Not all installations will have a full set of preprocessors. Some of the preprocessors and the letters used to designate them are: .Nm eqn Pq e , .Nm grap Pq g , .Nm pic Pq p , .Nm tbl Pq t , .Nm vgrind Pq v , .Nm refer Pq r . This option overrides the .Ev MANROFFSEQ environment variable. .It Fl t Use .Dq Li "%troff%" to format the manual page, passing the output to stdout. The default output format of .Xr groff 1 is Postscript, but see the manual page of .Xr groff 1 for ways to pick an alternate format. .Pp Depending on the selected format and the availability of printing devices, the output may need to be passed through some filter or another before being printed. .It Fl w Do not actually display the man pages, but do print the location(s) of the files that would be formatted or displayed. .El .Sh ENVIRONMENT .Bl -tag -width ".Ev MACHINE_ARCH" .It Ev LC_ALL , LC_CTYPE , LANG These variables specify the preferred language for manual pages. (See the .Fl o option above.) .It Ev MACHINE If .Ev MACHINE is set, its value is used to override the current machine type when searching machine specific subdirectories. .It Ev MACHINE_ARCH If .Ev MACHINE_ARCH is set, its value is used to override the current architecture when searching architecture specific subdirectories. .It Ev MANPATH If .Ev MANPATH is set, its value is used as the path to search for manual pages. .It Ev MANROFFSEQ If .Ev MANROFFSEQ is set, its value is used to determine the set of preprocessors run before running .Xr nroff 1 or .Xr troff 1 . By default, pages are passed through the table preprocessor .Pq Xr tbl 1 before .Xr nroff 1 . .It Ev MANSECT If .Ev MANSECT is set, its value is used to determine which manual sections to search. .It Ev PAGER If .Ev PAGER is set, its value is used as the name of the program to use to display the man page. By default, .Dq Li "%pager%" is used. .El .Sh EXAMPLES .Pp Normally, to look at the relevant manpage information for .Dq Li getopt , one would use: .Pp .Dl "man getopt" .Pp However, when referring to a specific section of the manual, such as .Xr getopt 3 , one would use: .Pp .Dl "man 3 getopt" .Sh SEE ALSO .Xr apropos 1 , .Xr groff 1 , .Xr manpath 1 , .Xr more 1 , .Xr whatis 1 , .Xr man 7 , .Xr mdoc 7 .Sh BUGS The .Fl t option only works if the .Xr troff 1 Ns -like program is installed.