NAME

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

SYNOPSIS

man [ − ] [ −a ] [ −t ] [ −M path ] [ −T path ] [ section ] title ... 
man [ −a ] −k keyword ... 
man [ −a ] −f file ... 

DESCRIPTION

man is a program which gives information from the reference manual.  It can be asked for one line descriptions of commands specified by name, or for all commands whose description contains any of a set of keywords. 

−k keyword ... 
man prints out a one line synopsis of each manual sections whose listing in the table of contents contains one of those keywords. 

−f file ... 
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 the that section of the manual for the given titles.  section is either an Arabic section number, one of the characters from ‘nlops’, or one of the words “new”, “local”, “old”, “pds”, or “sony”.  A section number may be followed by more than a single letter classifier.  For instance, 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. 

When given the option −t, man uses ditroff(1) for a formatter.

If the standard output is not a terminal, or if the flag − is given, man does not pipe its output through more(1) but use cat(1). In other case, man uses a terminal display program specified by the environment variables MANPAGER or PAGER.  If these environment variables are not specified, man pipes its output through ‘more −si’.  Hit a space to continue, a control-D to scroll half of a screen when the output stops. 

Normally man checks in locations of multi language manuals that are indicated by the environment variable LANG (e.g. /usr/man/ja_JP.SJIS) and in standard locations for manual information (/usr/man/C).  If /usr/man/C does not exist, /usr/man is checked.  If LANG is ‘ja_JP.SJIS’ or ‘ja_JP.EUC’, man checks another KANJI code manual in case of not existing the directory indicated by LANG.  And in this case, man converts from Shift JIS code to Japanese EUC code, or does the opposite conversion.  ‘/usr/man/ja_JP.SJIS’ is for Japanese Shift JIS code manual, ‘/usr/man/ja_JP.EUC’ is for Japanese EUC code manual, and ‘/usr/man/C’ is for English manual.  Option −a forces man to check only ‘/usr/man/C’. 

If the environment variable MANPATH is set, its value is used for the default path as a manual search path.  These can be changed by supplying a search path with the −M flag.  The search path is a colon (‘:’) separated list of directories in which manual subdirectories of various languages (C, ja_JP.SJIS, ja_JP.EUC) may be found; e.g. ‘/usr/local:/usr/man’.  If LANG is ja_JP.SJIS and search path is ‘/usr/local:/usr/man’, man checks /usr/local/ja_JP.SJIS, /usr/local/C, /usr/man/ja_JP.SJIS, and /usr/man/C.  However, if directories (‘∗/ja_JP.SJIS’) do not exist, man checks‘∗/ja_JP.EUC’ and converts Japanese EUC code to Shift JIS code.  If directories (‘∗/C’) do not exist, /usr/local and /usr/man are checked.  If a search path is supplied with the −k or −f options, it must be specified first. 

man will look for the manual page in either of two forms, the nroff source or preformatted pages (cat?).  If either version is available, the manual page will be displayed.  If the preformatted version is available, and it has a more recent modify time than the nroff source,  it will be promptly displayed.  Otherwise, the manual page will be formatted with nroff and displayed.  If the user has permission, the formatted manual page will be deposited in the proper place, so that later invocations of man will not need to format the page again. 

man makes temporary files in /tmp for formatting with nroff and for converting Japanese KANJI code.  −T option changes the directory of the temporary files. 

SOURCE FILE FORMAT

man pipes its input to nroff(1) or ditroff(1) through the corresponding preprocessors, when the first line of a source file is a string of the form: ’\" string

stringfilter
ppic
ttbl
eeqn

If −t option is not used, only tbl(1) is executed.

FILES

/usr/man/Cstandard ENGLISH manual area
/usr/man/∗standard MULTI LANGUAGES manual area
/usr/man/∗/man?/∗directories containing source for manuals
/usr/man/∗/cat?/∗directories containing preformatted pages
/usr/man/∗/whatiskeyword database

SEE ALSO

apropos(1), whatis(1), more(1), nroff(1), ditroff(1), whereis(1), catman(8), eqn(1), tbl(1), pic(1), mkmaneuc(8), setlocale(3)

BUGS

The manual is supposed to be reproducible either on the phototypesetter or on a typewriter.  However, on a typewriter, some information is necessarily lost. 
When −t option is not used, commands managed by pic(1) or eqn(1) are printed as they are. With man command, neqn(1) should be used to get the collect output of (man) manual.

The commands that are specified in the environment variables MANPAGER and/or PAGER must accept not only a standard input but also an argument list as an input file.  That is, a command line that includes pipes is not allowed such as ‘cat -s | more.’ Be careful when specifying the environment variable PAGER to be a man command specific (e.g. ‘less −s’ etc.)  since this variable is used in other commands also. 

After Japanese manual installed, only /usr/man/ja_JP.SJIS exists.  A command mkmaneuc(8) makes /usr/man/ja_JP.EUC from /usr/man/ja_JP.SJIS.

If both /usr/man/ja_JP.EUC and /usr/man/ja_JP.SJIS are exist, all manuals must be set in the both directories. 

NEWS-OSRelease 4.2.1R