MAN(1) | General Commands Manual | MAN(1)

# NAME

man — display the on-line manual pages (aka “man pages”)

# SYNOPSIS

man | [-acw|-h] [-C file] [-M path] [-m path] [-S srch] [[-s] section] name ...

man | -k [-C file] [-M path] [-m path] keyword ...

man | -p

# DESCRIPTION

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.
-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
  Display the header lines for any man pages matching 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 or relative path then man interprets it as a file specification, so that you can do man ./foo.5 or even man /cd/foo/bar.1.gz.

# ENVIRONMENT

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.
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.
PAGER
  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.

# FILES

/etc/man.conf
  default man configuration file.
/usr/{share,X11R7,pkg,local}/man/whatis.db
  standard whatis/apropos database search path, set in /etc/man.conf.

# SEE ALSO

apropos(1), whatis(1), whereis(1), man.conf(5), mdoc(7), mdoc.samples(7)

# STANDARDS

man conforms to X/Open Commands and Utilities Issue 5 (“XCU5”).

# BUGS

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.

October 7, 2011 | NetBSD 6.0