MAN(1-BSD) RISC/os Reference Manual MAN(1-BSD)
NAME
man - find and print manual information
SYNOPSIS
[/usr/ucb/]man [ - ] [ -[acdntwBV] ] [ -Tterm ]
[ -12 ] [ -[PM] path ] [ section ] [ -S systype ] title
...
man -k keyword ...
man -f file ...
DESCRIPTION
man is a program which gives information from the program-
mers 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. It can also
provide on-line access to the sections of the printed
manual.
When given the option -k and a set of keywords, man invokes
the apropos(1) command with the list of keywords as argu-
ments.
When given the option -f and a list of file names, man
invokes the whatis(1) command with the list of file names as
arguments.
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 (1 to
8), or one of the words ``new,'' ``local,'' ``old,'' or
``public.'' A section number may be followed by 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. If the -a option is specified,
man displays all applicable manual pages.
If the standard output is a teletype and the - option has
not been given, man pipes its output through a pager (see
below).
If the option -t is given, the command ``mantroff -man'' is
executed to format the manual page on a typesetter or other
graphics device (your system administrator can set up a
``mantroff'' command or link, or you can set up one yourself
somewhere in your execution path, such as in your personal
bin directory). If this command can not be found, ``vtroff
-man'' is used.
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If the option -n (or, for compatibility, the option -w) is
given, instead of printing the manual page, the name of the
manual page source is printed. This is provided for people
that need to locate the manual page sources and so that a
user with special formatting needs can execute a command
like:
formatter args `man -n command`
Normally man checks in a standard location for manual infor-
mation (/usr/man). This can be changed by supplying a
search path (a la the shell) with the -M or the -P flag.
The search path is a colon (`:') separated list of direc-
tories in which manual subdirectories may be found; e.g.
``/usr/local:/usr/man''. If the environment variable MANPATH
is set, its value is used for the default path. 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. 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.
The pager is executed by the user's shell, with contents of
the manual page file piped into the pager's standard input.
By default, the command ``more -s'' is executed as the
pager. If the environment variable MANPAGER is set, it is
used. If MANPAGER is not set, but PAGER is set, that is
used. In the case of PAGER, if the command ends with
``more'', ``less'', or ``page'', the -s option is added.
Also, if the command ends with ``more'' or ``less'', the -f
option is added, and the input is piped through ul before
being passed to the pager. For example, if PAGER is
``/usr/ucb/more'', the command ``cat filename | ul |
/usr/ucb/more -f -s'' is executed.
man also supports some extra options for compatibility with
the System V man, /usr/bin/man. By default, man prints 4.3
BSD-compatible manual pages before printing System V-
compatible manual pages. The -B option selects this
behavior. The -V option reverses the order, and also sets
the -a option. The -Tterm option sets the output terminal
type, and the -12 option selects 12 lines/page mode on ter-
minals which support it. The -c option is accepted, but has
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not function, since output is always filtered by col.
The -S option takes a second argument, systype, indicating
which order to search manual pages in. It overrides the
order implied by the -B or -V options, but does not affect
whether man stops after finding a match or finds all possi-
ble matches. The currently supported arguments for systype
are: bsd43 to search the 4.3 BSD manual pages first, sysv
to search the System V manual pages first, and posix to
search the POSIX manual pages first. If a match is not
found in the specified system type, then the remaining sys-
tem types are searched in an unspecified order.
FILES
/usr/man standard manual area
/usr/man/?_man/{bsd_,}man?/*
directories containing source for manuals
/usr/man/catman/?_man/{bsd_,}man?/*
directories containing preformatted pages
/usr/man/whatis keyword database
SEE ALSO
apropos(1), more(1), whatis(1), whereis(1)
ERRORS
man -k may return references to manual pages that are part
of optional software packages not installed on your system.
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