Series 300/500 Compressed Implementation

NAME

man − find manual information by keywords; print out the manual

SYNOPSIS

man −k keyword ... 
man −f file ... 
man [ − ] [ section ] title ... 

DESCRIPTION

Man is a program which gives information from the programmer’s manual.  It can be asked to form one line descriptions of commands specified by name, or for all commands whose description contains any of a set of keywords.  It can also provide online access to the sections of the printed manual. 

When given the option −k and a set of keywords, man prints out a one line synopsis of each manual section whose listing in the table of contents contains that keyword. 

When given the option −f and a list of file names, man attempts to locate manual sections related to those files, printing out the table of contents lines for those sections. 

When neither −k nor −f is specified, man formats a specified set of manual pages.  If a section specifier is given, man looks in that section of the manual for the given titles.  Section is an arabic section number, e.g. 3, which may be followed by a single letter classifier, e.g. 1g indicating a graphics program in section 1.  If section is omitted, man searches all sections of the manual, giving preference to commands over subroutines in system libraries, and printing the first section it finds, if any.  Each title is truncated to at most 11 characters to assure that there will be room for the section. The files in the /usr/man directories also truncate the title portion of the file name at 11 characters to assure room for the suffix in the 14 character file name. 

If the standard output is a teletype, or if the flag − is given, man pipes its output through more (1), with the −s option, to stop after each page. 

Man searches in three directories for the target file.  First man searches in /usr/man, then in /usr/contrib/man, and finally in /usr/local/man.  Within each of these directories, man searches in the cat*.Z subdirectory, the man*.Z subdirectory, the cat* subdirectory, and the man* subdirectory to find the most recent version of the manual entry.  If the man* or man*.Z file is most recent, or if the file is not present in cat* or cat*.Z, man retrieves it from the man* or man*.Z subdirectory and formats it.  If the cat*.Z subdirectory exists, the formatted version is compressed and installed in cat*.Z.  Otherwise, if the cat* subdirectory exists, the formatted version is installed in cat*.  The files in man*.Z and cat*.Z are in compressed form and must be uncompressed before they may be displayed.  If only the cat* or cat*.Z subdirectory is present and/or nroff is not installed, only those pages which have been preformatted are displayable. 

FILES

/usr/man/cat*[.Z]/∗
/usr/man/man*[.Z]/∗
/usr/contrib/man/cat*[.Z]/∗
/usr/contrib/man/man*[.Z]/∗
/usr/local/man/cat*[.Z]/∗
/usr/local/man/man*[.Z]/∗

SEE ALSO

catman(1M), more(1), rmnl(1), ul(1), whereis(1), compress(1). 

BUGS

The manual is supposed to be reproducible either on a phototypesetter or on a typewriter.  However, on a typewriter some information is necessarily lost. 

INTERNATIONAL SUPPORT

8- and 16-bit data, 8-bit filenames. 
 
 

Hewlett-Packard Company  —  May 11, 2021