man(1-BSD) MISC. REFERENCE MANUAL PAGES man(1-BSD)
NAME
man - display reference manual pages; find reference pages
by keyword
SYNOPSIS
/usr/ucb/man [ - ] [ -t ] [ -bsd ] [ -sys5 ] [ -M path ] [
-T macro-package ] [[ section ] title...]
title...
/usr/ucb/man [-M path] -k keyword ...
/usr/ucb/man [-M path] -f filename ...
DESCRIPTION
The man command displays information from the reference
manuals. It can display complete manual pages that you
select by title, or one-line summaries selected either by
keyword (-k), or by the name of an associated file (-f).
A section, when given, applies to the titles that follow it
on the command line (up to the next section, if any). man
looks in the indicated section of the manual for those
titles. section is either a digit (perhaps followed by a
single letter indicating the type of manual page), or one of
the words new, local, old, or public. If section is omit-
ted, man searches all reference sections (giving preference
to commands over functions) and prints the first manual page
it finds. If no manual page is located, man prints an error
message. If you invoke man from /usr/ucb directory, man
searches the /usr/share/man/bsd_man? directories first.
The reference page sources are typically located in the
/usr/share/man/man? and /usr/share/man/bsdman? direc-
tories. Since these directories are optionally installed,
they may not reside on your host; you may have to mount
/usr/share/man from a host on which they do reside. If
there are preformatted, up-to-date versions in corresponding
cat? or fmt? directories, man simply displays or prints
those versions. If the preformatted version of interest is
out of date or missing, man reformats it prior to display.
If directories for the preformatted versions are not pro-
vided, man reformats a page whenever it is requested; it
uses a temporary file to store the formatted text during
display.
If the standard output is not a terminal, or if the - flag
is given, man pipes its output through cat. Otherwise, man
pipes its output through more to handle paging and underlin-
ing on the screen.
The following options are available:
-bsd man searches only /usr/share/man/bsd_man? directories.
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man(1-BSD) MISC. REFERENCE MANUAL PAGES man(1-BSD)
-sys5 man searches only /usr/share/man/man? directories.
-t man arranges for the specified manual pages to be
troffed to a suitable raster output device (see troff
or vtroff). If both the - and -t flags are given, man
updates the troffed versions of each named title (if
necessary), but does not display them.
-M path
Change the search path for manual pages. path is a
colon-separated list of directories that contain
manual page directory subtrees. When used with the -k
or -f options, the -M option must appear first. Each
directory in the path is assumed to contain subdirec-
tories of the form man[1-8l-p].
-T macro-package
man uses macro-package rather than the standard -man
macros defined in /usr/ucblib/doctools/tmac/tmac.an
for formatting manual pages.
-k keyword ...
man prints out one-line summaries from the whatis
database (table of contents) that contain any of the
given keywords.
-f filename ...
man attempts to locate manual pages related to any of
the given filenames. It strips the leading pathname
components from each filename, and then prints one-
line summaries containing the resulting basename or
names.
MANUAL PAGES
Manual pages are troff or nroff source files prepared with
the -man macro package.
When formatting a manual page, man examines the first line
to determine whether it requires special processing.
Preprocessing Manual Pages
If the first line is a string of the form:
'\"! X
where X is separated from the the `"' by a single SPACE and
consists of any combination of characters in the following
list, man pipes its input to troff or nroff through the
corresponding preprocessors.
e eqn, or neqn for nroff
r refer
t tbl, and col for nroff
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man(1-BSD) MISC. REFERENCE MANUAL PAGES man(1-BSD)
eqn eqn, or neqn for nroff
refer refer
tbl tbl, and col for nroff
If eqn or neqn is invoked, it will automatically read the
file /usr/ucblib/pub/eqnchar [see eqnchar(7)].
ENVIRONMENT
MANPATH If set, its value overrides /usr/share/man as
the default search path. The -M flag, in
turn, overrides this value.
PAGER A program to use for interactively delivering
man's output to the screen. If not set,
`more -s' (see more) is used.
TCAT The name of the program to use to display
troffed manual pages. If not set, `lp
-Ttroff' (see lp) is used.
TROFF The name of the formatter to use when the -t
flag is given. If not set, troff is used.
FILES
/usr/share/man root of the standard manual page
directory subtree
/usr/share/man/man?/* unformatted manual entries
/usr/share/man/cat?/* nroffed manual entries
/usr/share/man/fmt?/* troffed manual entries
/usr/share/man/bsdman?/*
unformatted BSD manual entries
/usr/share/man/bsdcat?/*
nroffed BSD manual entries
/usr/share/man/bsdfmt?/*
troffed BSD manual entries
/usr/share/man/whatis table of contents and keyword data-
base
/usr/share/man/X11 root of the X window manual page
directory subtree
/usr/share/man/X11/whatis
X window table of contents and key-
word database
/usr/share/man/Motif root of the Motif manual page
directory subtree
/usr/share/man/Motif/whatis
Motif table of contents and keyword
database
/usr/ucblib/doctools/tmac/man.macs
standard -man macro package
/usr/ucblib/pub/eqnchar
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man(1-BSD) MISC. REFERENCE MANUAL PAGES man(1-BSD)
SEE ALSO
apropos(1), cat(1), catman(1M), col(1), eqn(1), nroff(1),
refer(1), tbl(1), troff(1), whatis(1), eqnchar(7).
col(1), lp(1), more(1) in the User's Reference Manual.
NOTES
The manual is supposed to be reproducible either on a photo-
typesetter or on an ASCII terminal. However, on a terminal
some information (indicated by font changes, for instance)
is necessarily lost.
Some dumb terminals cannot process the vertical motions pro-
duced by the e (eqn(1)) preprocessing flag. To prevent gar-
bled output on these terminals, when you use e also use t,
to invoke col(1) implicitly. This workaround has the disad-
vantage of eliminating superscripts and subscripts - even on
those terminals that can display them. CTRL-Q will clear a
terminal that gets confused by eqn(1) output.
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