.\" $OpenBSD: man.1,v 1.31 2018/04/19 23:40:43 schwarze Exp $ .\" .\" Copyright (c) 1989, 1990, 1993 .\" The Regents of the University of California. All rights reserved. .\" Copyright (c) 2003, 2007, 2008, 2014 Jason McIntyre .\" Copyright (c) 2010, 2011, 2014-2017 Ingo Schwarze .\" .\" Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without .\" modification, are permitted provided that the following conditions .\" are met: .\" 1. Redistributions of source code must retain the above copyright .\" notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer. .\" 2. Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the above copyright .\" notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer in the .\" documentation and/or other materials provided with the distribution. .\" 3. Neither the name of the University nor the names of its contributors .\" may be used to endorse or promote products derived from this software .\" without specific prior written permission. .\" .\" THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED BY THE REGENTS AND CONTRIBUTORS ``AS IS'' AND .\" ANY EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE .\" IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE .\" ARE DISCLAIMED. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE REGENTS OR CONTRIBUTORS BE LIABLE .\" FOR ANY DIRECT, INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, EXEMPLARY, OR CONSEQUENTIAL .\" DAMAGES (INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, PROCUREMENT OF SUBSTITUTE GOODS .\" OR SERVICES; LOSS OF USE, DATA, OR PROFITS; OR BUSINESS INTERRUPTION) .\" HOWEVER CAUSED AND ON ANY THEORY OF LIABILITY, WHETHER IN CONTRACT, STRICT .\" LIABILITY, OR TORT (INCLUDING NEGLIGENCE OR OTHERWISE) ARISING IN ANY WAY .\" OUT OF THE USE OF THIS SOFTWARE, EVEN IF ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF .\" SUCH DAMAGE. .\" .\" @(#)man.1 8.2 (Berkeley) 1/2/94 .\" .Dd $Mdocdate: April 19 2018 $ .Dt MAN 1 .Os .Sh NAME .Nm man .Nd display manual pages .Sh SYNOPSIS .Nm man .Op Fl acfhklw .Op Fl C Ar file .Op Fl M Ar path .Op Fl m Ar path .Op Fl S Ar subsection .Op Oo Fl s Oc Ar section .Ar name ... .Sh DESCRIPTION The .Nm utility displays the manual pages entitled .Ar name . Pages may be selected according to a specific category .Pq Ar section or machine architecture .Pq Ar subsection . .Pp The options are as follows: .Bl -tag -width Ds .It Fl a Display all matching manual pages. Normally, only the first page found is displayed. .It Fl C Ar file Use the specified .Ar file instead of the default configuration file. This permits users to configure their own manual environment. See .Xr man.conf 5 for a description of the contents of this file. .It Fl c Copy the manual page to the standard output instead of using .Xr more 1 to paginate it. This is done by default if the standard output is not a terminal device. .Pp When using .Fl c , most terminal devices are unable to show the markup. To print the output of .Nm to the terminal with markup but without using a pager, pipe it to .Xr ul 1 . To remove the markup, pipe the output to .Xr col 1 .Fl b instead. .It Fl f A synonym for .Xr whatis 1 . It searches for .Ar name in manual page names and displays the header lines from all matching pages. The search is case insensitive and matches whole words only. .It Fl h Display only the SYNOPSIS lines of the requested manual pages. Implies .Fl a and .Fl c . .It Fl k A synonym for .Xr apropos 1 . Instead of .Ar name , an expression can be provided using the syntax described in the .Xr apropos 1 manual. By default, it displays the header lines of all matching pages. .It Fl l A synonym for .Xr mandoc 1 . The .Ar name arguments are interpreted as filenames. No search is done and .Ar file , .Ar path , .Ar section , .Ar subsection , and .Fl w are ignored. This option implies .Fl a . .It Fl M Ar path Override the list of standard directories which .Nm searches for manual pages. The supplied .Ar path must be a colon .Pq Ql \&: separated list of directories. This search path may also be set using the environment variable .Ev MANPATH . .It Fl m Ar path Augment the list of standard directories which .Nm searches for manual pages. The supplied .Ar path must be a colon .Pq Ql \&: separated list of directories. These directories will be searched before the standard directories or the directories specified using the .Fl M option or the .Ev MANPATH environment variable. .It Fl S Ar subsection Only show pages for the specified .Xr machine 1 architecture. .Ar subsection is case insensitive. .Pp By default manual pages for all architectures are installed. Therefore this option can be used to view pages for one architecture whilst using another. .Pp This option overrides the .Ev MACHINE environment variable. .It Oo Fl s Oc Ar section Only select manuals from the specified .Ar section . The currently available sections are: .Pp .Bl -tag -width "localXXX" -offset indent -compact .It 1 General commands .Pq tools and utilities . .It 2 System calls and error numbers. .It 3 Library functions. .It 3p .Xr perl 1 programmer's reference guide. .It 4 Device drivers. .It 5 File formats. .It 6 Games. .It 7 Miscellaneous information. .It 8 System maintenance and operation commands. .It 9 Kernel internals. .El .Pp If not specified and a match is found in more than one section, the first match is selected from the following list: 1, 8, 6, 2, 3, 5, 7, 4, 9, 3p. .It Fl w List the pathnames of all matching manual pages instead of displaying any of them. .El .Pp The options .Fl IKOTW are also supported and are documented in .Xr mandoc 1 . The options .Fl fkl are mutually exclusive and override each other. .Pp Guidelines for writing man pages can be found in .Xr mdoc 7 . .Pp If both a formatted and an unformatted version of the same manual page, for example .Pa cat1/foo.0 and .Pa man1/foo.1 , exist in the same directory, only the unformatted version is used. .Sh ENVIRONMENT .Bl -tag -width MANPATHX .It Ev MACHINE As some manual pages are intended only for specific architectures, .Nm 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 .Ev MACHINE to the name of a specific architecture, or with the .Fl S option. .Ev MACHINE is case insensitive. .It Ev MANPAGER Any non-empty value of the environment variable .Ev MANPAGER is used instead of the standard pagination program, .Xr more 1 . If .Xr less 1 is used, the interactive .Ic :t command can be used to go to the definitions of various terms, for example command line options, command modifiers, internal commands, environment variables, function names, preprocessor macros, .Xr errno 2 values, and some other emphasized words. Some terms may have defining text at more than one place. In that case, the .Xr less 1 interactive commands .Ic t and .Ic T can be used to move to the next and to the previous place providing information about the term last searched for with .Ic :t . .It Ev MANPATH The standard search path used by .Nm may be changed by specifying a path in the .Ev MANPATH environment variable. The format of the path is a colon .Pq Ql \&: separated list of directories. Invalid paths are ignored. Overridden by .Fl M , ignored if .Fl l is specified. .Pp If .Ev MANPATH begins with a colon, it is appended to the default list; if it ends with a colon, it is prepended to the default list; or if it contains two adjacent colons, the standard search path is inserted between the colons. If none of these conditions are met, it overrides the standard search path. .It Ev PAGER Specifies the pagination program to use when .Ev MANPAGER is not defined. If neither PAGER nor MANPAGER is defined, .Xr more 1 .Fl s is used. .El .Sh FILES .Bl -tag -width /etc/man.conf -compact .It Pa /etc/man.conf default man configuration file .El .Sh EXIT STATUS .Ex -std man See .Xr mandoc 1 for details. .Sh EXAMPLES Format a page for pasting extracts into an email message \(em avoid printing any UTF-8 characters, reduce the width to ease quoting in replies, and remove markup: .Pp .Dl $ man -T ascii -O width=65 pledge | col -b .Pp Read a typeset page in a PDF viewer: .Pp .Dl $ MANPAGER=mupdf man -T pdf lpd .Sh SEE ALSO .Xr apropos 1 , .Xr col 1 , .Xr mandoc 1 , .Xr ul 1 , .Xr whereis 1 , .Xr man.conf 5 , .Xr mdoc 7 .Sh STANDARDS The .Nm utility is compliant with the .St -p1003.1-2008 specification. .Pp The flags .Op Fl aCcfhIKlMmOSsTWw , as well as the environment variables .Ev MACHINE , .Ev MANPAGER , and .Ev MANPATH , are extensions to that specification. .Sh HISTORY A .Nm command first appeared in .At v3 . .Pp The .Fl w option first appeared in .At v7 ; .Fl f and .Fl k in .Bx 4 ; .Fl M in .Bx 4.3 ; .Fl a in .Bx 4.3 Tahoe ; .Fl c and .Fl m in .Bx 4.3 Reno ; .Fl h in .Bx 4.3 Net/2 ; .Fl C in .Nx 1.0 ; .Fl s and .Fl S in .Ox 2.3 ; and .Fl I , .Fl K , .Fl l , .Fl O , and .Fl W in .Ox 5.7 . The .Fl T option first appeared in .At III and was also added in .Ox 5.7 .