Manual Pages for UNIX Darwin command on man manpath

man(1) man(1)

NAME

man - format and display the on-line manual pages

SYNOPSIS

mmaann [-aaccddffFFhhkkKKttwwWW] [--ppaatthh] [-mm system] [-pp string] [-CC configfile]

[-MM pathlist] [-PP pager] [-SS sectionlist] [section] name ...

DESCRIPTION

mmaann formats and displays the on-line manual pages. If you specify sec-

tion, mmaann only looks in that section of the manual. name is normally the name of the manual page, which is typically the name of a command, function, or file. However, if name contains a slash (//) then mmaann interprets it as a file specification, so that you can do mmaann ..//ffoooo..55 or even mmaann //ccdd//ffoooo//bbaarr..11..ggzz. See below for a description of where mmaann looks for the manual page files. OOPPTTIIOONNSS

-CC ccoonnffiiggffiillee

Specify the configuration file to use; the default is //uussrr//sshhaarree//mmiisscc//mmaann..ccoonnff. (See mmaann..ccoonnff(5).)

-MM ppaatthh

Specify the list of directories to search for man pages. Sepa-

rate the directories with colons. An empty list is the same as

not specifying -MM at all. See SSEEAARRCCHH PPAATTHH FFOORR MMAANNUUAALL PPAAGGEESS.

-PP ppaaggeerr

Specify which pager to use. This option overrides the MMAANNPPAAGGEERR

environment variable, which in turn overrides the PPAAGGEERR vari-

able. By default, mmaann uses //uussrr//bbiinn//lleessss -iiss.

-SS sseeccttiioonnlliisstt

List is a colon separated list of manual sections to search. This option overrides the MMAANNSSEECCTT environment variable.

-aa By default, mmaann will exit after displaying the first manual page

it finds. Using this option forces mmaann to display all the man-

ual pages that match nnaammee,, not just the first.

-cc Reformat the source man page, even when an up-to-date cat page

exists. This can be meaningful if the cat page was formatted

for a screen with a different number of columns, or if the pre-

formatted page is corrupted.

-dd Don't actually display the man pages, but do print gobs of

debugging information.

-DD Both display and print debugging info.

-ff Equivalent to wwhhaattiiss.

-FF or --pprreeffoorrmmaatt

Format only - do not display.

-hh Print a one-line help message and exit.

-kk Equivalent to aapprrooppooss.

-KK Search for the specified string in *all* man pages. Warning:

this is probably very slow! It helps to specify a section. (Just to give a rough idea, on my machine this takes about a minute per 500 man pages.)

-mm ssyysstteemm

Specify an alternate set of man pages to search based on the system name given.

-pp ssttrriinngg

Specify the sequence of preprocessors to run before nnrrooffff or

ttrrooffff. Not all installations will have a full set of preproces-

sors. Some of the preprocessors and the letters used to desig-

nate them are: eqn (e), grap (g), pic (p), tbl (t), vgrind (v), refer (r). This option overrides the MMAANNRROOFFFFSSEEQQ environment variable.

-tt Use //uussrr//bbiinn//ggrrooffff -TTppss -mmaannddoocc -cc to format the manual page,

passing the output to ssttddoouutt.. The output from //uussrr//bbiinn//ggrrooffff

-TTppss -mmaannddoocc -cc may need to be passed through some filter or

another before being printed.

-ww or --ppaatthh

Don't actually display the man pages, but do print the loca-

tion(s) of the files that would be formatted or displayed. If no argument is given: display (on stdout) the list of directories that is searched by mmaann for man pages. If mmaannppaatthh is a link to

man, then "manpath" is equivalent to "man -path".

-WW Like -w, but print file names one per line, without additional

information. This is useful in shell commands like mmaann -aaWW mmaann

|| xxaarrggss llss -ll

CCAATT PPAAGGEESS

Man will try to save the formatted man pages, in order to save format-

ting time the next time these pages are needed. Traditionally, format-

ted versions of pages in DIR/manX are saved in DIR/catX, but other map-

pings from man dir to cat dir can be specified in //uussrr//sshhaarree//mmiisscc//mmaann..ccoonnff. No cat pages are saved when the required cat

directory does not exist. No cat pages are saved when they are format-

ted for a line length different from 80. No cat pages are saved when man.conf contains the line NOCACHE. It is possible to make mmaann suid to a user man. Then, if a cat directory has owner man and mode 0755 (only writable by man), and the cat files have owner man and mode 0644 or 0444 (only writable by man, or not writable at all), no ordinary user can change the cat pages or put other files in the cat directory. If mmaann is not made suid, then a cat directory should have mode 0777 if all users should be able to leave cat pages there.

The option -cc forces reformatting a page, even if a recent cat page

exists. SSEEAARRCCHH PPAATTHH FFOORR MMAANNUUAALL PPAAGGEESS mmaann uses a sophisticated method of finding manual page files, based on the invocation options and environment variables, the

//uussrr//sshhaarree//mmiisscc//mmaann..ccoonnff configuration file, and some built in conven-

tions and heuristics. First of all, when the name argument to mmaann contains a slash (//), mmaann assumes it is a file specification itself, and there is no searching involved. But in the normal case where name doesn't contain a slash, mmaann searches a variety of directories for a file that could be a manual page for the topic named.

If you specify the -MM pathlist option, pathlist is a colon-separated

list of the directories that mmaann searches.

If you don't specify -MM but set the MMAANNPPAATTHH environment variable, the

value of that variable is the list of the directories that mmaann searches.

If you don't specify an explicit path list with -MM or MMAANNPPAATTHH, mmaann

develops its own path list based on the contents of the configuration

file //uussrr//sshhaarree//mmiisscc//mmaann..ccoonnff. The MMAANNPPAATTHH statements in the configu-

ration file identify particular directories to include in the search path.

Furthermore, the MMAANNPPAATTHHMMAAPP statements add to the search path depend-

ing on your command search path (i.e. your PPAATTHH environment variable).

For each directory that may be in the command search path, a MMAANN-

PPAATTHHMMAAPP statement specifies a directory that should be added to the search path for manual page files. mmaann looks at the PPAATTHH variable and adds the corresponding directories to the manual page file search path. Thus, with the proper use of MMAANNPPAATTHHMMAAPP, when you issue the command mmaann xxyyzz, you get a manual page for the program that would run if you issued the command xxyyzz. In addition, for each directory in the command search path (we'll call it a "command directory") for which you do not have a MMAANNPPAATTHHMMAAPP statement, mmaann automatically looks for a manual page directory "nearby"

namely as a subdirectory in the command directory itself or in the par-

ent directory of the command directory.

You can disable the automatic "nearby" searches by including a NNOOAAUU-

TTOOPPAATTHH statement in //uussrr//sshhaarree//mmiisscc//mmaann..ccoonnff. In each directory in the search path as described above, mmaann searches for a file named topic..section, with an optional suffix on the section number and possibly a compression suffix. If it doesn't find such a file, it then looks in any subdirectories named mmaannN or ccaattN where N is the manual section number. If the file is in a ccaattN subdirectory, mmaann assumes it is a formatted manual page file (cat page). Otherwise, mmaann assumes it is unformatted. In either case, if the filename has a known compression suffix (like ..ggzz), mmaann assumes it is gzipped. If you want to see where (or if) mmaann would find the manual page for a

particular topic, use the --ppaatthh (-ww) option.

ENVIRONMENT MMAANNPPAATTHH If MMAANNPPAATTHH is set, mmaann uses it as the path to search for manual

page files. It overrides the configuration file and the auto-

matic search path, but is overridden by the -MM invocation

option. See SSEEAARRCCHH PPAATTHH FFOORR MMAANNUUAALL PPAAGGEESS. MMAANNPPLL If MMAANNPPLL is set, its value is used as the display page length. Otherwise, the entire man page will occupy one (long) page. MMAANNRROOFFFFSSEEQQ If MMAANNRROOFFFFSSEEQQ is set, its value is used to determine the set of preprocessors run before running nnrrooffff or ttrrooffff. By default, pages are passed through the tbl preprocessor before nnrrooffff. MMAANNSSEECCTT If MMAANNSSEECCTT is set, its value is used to determine which manual sections to search. MMAANNWWIIDDTTHH If MMAANNWWIIDDTTHH is set, its value is used as the width manpages should be displayed. Otherwise the pages may be displayed over the whole width of your screen. MMAANNPPAAGGEERR If MMAANNPPAAGGEERR is set, its value is used as the name of the program to use to display the man page. If not, then PPAAGGEERR is used. If

that has no value either, //uussrr//bbiinn//lleessss -iiss is used.

LLAANNGG If LLAANNGG is set, its value defines the name of the subdirectory where man first looks for man pages. Thus, the command `LANG=dk man 1 foo' will cause man to look for the foo man page in .../dk/man1/foo.1, and if it cannot find such a file, then in .../man1/foo.1, where ... is a directory on the search path. NNLLSSPPAATTHH,, LLCCMMEESSSSAAGGEESS,, LLAANNGG The environment variables NNLLSSPPAATTHH and LLCCMMEESSSSAAGGEESS (or LLAANNGG when the latter does not exist) play a role in locating the message catalog. (But the English messages are compiled in, and for English no catalog is required.) Note that programs like ccooll((11)) called by man also use e.g. LCCTYPE. PPAATTHH PPAATTHH helps determine the search path for manual page files. See SSEEAARRCCHH PPAATTHH FFOORR MMAANNUUAALL PPAAGGEESS. SSYYSSTTEEMM SSYYSSTTEEMM is used to get the default alternate system name (for use

with the -mm option).

BUGS

The -tt option only works if a troff-like program is installed.

If you see blinking \255 or instead of hyphens, put `LESS-

CHARSET=latin1' in your environment. TTIIPPSS If you add the line

(global-set-key [(f1)] (lambda () (interactive) (manual-entry (cur-

rent-word))))

to your .emacs file, then hitting F1 will give you the man page for the library call at the current cursor position. To get a plain text version of a man page, without backspaces and underscores, try

# man foo | col -b > foo.mantxt

September 2, 1995 man(1)