MAN(1) Manual pager utils MAN(1)
NAME
SYNOPSIS
man [-C file] [-d] [-D] [--warnings[=warnings]] [-R encoding] [-L locale] [-m sys‐
tem[,...]] [-M path] [-S list] [-e extension] [-i|-I] [--regex|--wildcard]
[--names-only] [-a] [-u] [--no-subpages] [-P pager] [-r prompt] [-7] [-E encoding]
[--no-hyphenation] [--no-justification] [-p string] [-t] [-T[device]] [-H[browser]]
[-X[dpi]] [-Z] [[section] page ...] ...
man -k [apropos options] regexp ...
man -K [-w|-W] [-S list] [-i|-I] [--regex] [section] term ...
man -f [whatis options] page ...
man -l [-C file] [-d] [-D] [--warnings[=warnings]] [-R encoding] [-L locale] [-P
pager] [-r prompt] [-7] [-E encoding] [-p string] [-t] [-T[device]] [-H[browser]]
[-X[dpi]] [-Z] file ...
man -w|-W [-C file] [-d] [-D] page ...
man -c [-C file] [-d] [-D] page ...
man [-hV]
DESCRIPTION
man is the system's manual pager. Each page argument given to man is normally the
name of a program, utility or function. The manual page associated with each of
these arguments is then found and displayed. A section, if provided, will direct
man to look only in that section of the manual. The default action is to search in
all of the available sections, following a pre-defined order and to show only the
first page found, even if page exists in several sections.
The table below shows the section numbers of the manual followed by the types of
pages they contain.
1 Executable programs or shell commands
2 System calls (functions provided by the kernel)
3 Library calls (functions within program libraries)
4 Special files (usually found in /dev)
5 File formats and conventions eg /etc/passwd
6 Games
7 Miscellaneous (including macro packages and conven‐
tions), e.g. man(7), groff(7)
8 System administration commands (usually only for root)
9 Kernel routines [Non standard]
A manual page consists of several sections.
Conventional section names include NAME, SYNOPSIS, CONFIGURATION, DESCRIPTION,
OPTIONS, EXIT STATUS, RETURN VALUE, ERRORS, ENVIRONMENT, FILES, VERSIONS, CONFORM‐
ING TO, NOTES, BUGS, EXAMPLE, AUTHORS, and SEE ALSO.
The following conventions apply to the SYNOPSIS section and can be used as a guide
in other sections.
bold text type exactly as shown.
italic text replace with appropriate argument.
[-abc] any or all arguments within [ ] are optional.
-a|-b options delimited by | cannot be used together.
argument ... argument is repeatable.
[expression] ... entire expression within [ ] is repeatable.
Exact rendering may vary depending on the output device. For instance, man will
usually not be able to render italics when running in a terminal, and will typi‐
cally use underlined or coloured text instead.
The command or function illustration is a pattern that should match all possible
invocations. In some cases it is advisable to illustrate several exclusive invoca‐
tions as is shown in the SYNOPSIS section of this manual page.
EXAMPLES
man ls
Display the manual page for the item (program) ls.
man -a intro
Display, in succession, all of the available intro manual pages contained
within the manual. It is possible to quit between successive displays or skip
any of them.
man -t alias | lpr -Pps
Format the manual page referenced by `alias', usually a shell manual page, into
the default troff or groff format and pipe it to the printer named ps. The
default output for groff is usually PostScript. man --help should advise as to
which processor is bound to the -t option.
man -l -Tdvi ./foo.1x.gz > ./foo.1x.dvi
This command will decompress and format the nroff source manual page
./foo.1x.gz into a device independent (dvi) file. The redirection is necessary
as the -T flag causes output to be directed to stdout with no pager. The out‐
put could be viewed with a program such as xdvi or further processed into Post‐
Script using a program such as dvips.
man -k printf
Search the short descriptions and manual page names for the keyword printf as
regular expression. Print out any matches. Equivalent to apropos -r printf.
man -f smail
Lookup the manual pages referenced by smail and print out the short descrip‐
tions of any found. Equivalent to whatis -r smail.
OVERVIEW
Many options are available to man in order to give as much flexibility as possible
to the user. Changes can be made to the search path, section order, output proces‐
sor, and other behaviours and operations detailed below.
If set, various environment variables are interrogated to determine the operation
of man. It is possible to set the `catch all' variable $MANOPT to any string in
command line format with the exception that any spaces used as part of an option's
argument must be escaped (preceded by a backslash). man will parse $MANOPT prior
to parsing its own command line. Those options requiring an argument will be over‐
ridden by the same options found on the command line. To reset all of the options
set in $MANOPT, -D can be specified as the initial command line option. This will
allow man to `forget' about the options specified in $MANOPT although they must
still have been valid.
The manual pager utilities packaged as man-db make extensive use of index database
caches. These caches contain information such as where each manual page can be
found on the filesystem and what its whatis (short one line description of the man
page) contains, and allow man to run faster than if it had to search the filesystem
each time to find the appropriate manual page. If requested using the -u option,
man will ensure that the caches remain consistent, which can obviate the need to
manually run software to update traditional whatis text databases.
If man cannot find a mandb initiated index database for a particular manual page
hierarchy, it will still search for the requested manual pages, although file glob‐
bing will be necessary to search within that hierarchy. If whatis or apropos fails
to find an index it will try to extract information from a traditional whatis data‐
base instead.
These utilities support compressed source nroff files having, by default, the
extensions of .Z, .z and .gz. It is possible to deal with any compression exten‐
sion, but this information must be known at compile time. Also, by default, any
cat pages produced are compressed using gzip. Each `global' manual page hierarchy
such as /usr/share/man or /usr/X11R6/man may have any directory as its cat page
hierarchy. Traditionally the cat pages are stored under the same hierarchy as the
man pages, but for reasons such as those specified in the File Hierarchy Standard
(FHS), it may be better to store them elsewhere. For details on how to do this,
please read manpath(5). For details on why to do this, read the standard.
International support is available with this package. Native language manual pages
are accessible (if available on your system) via use of locale functions. To acti‐
vate such support, it is necessary to set either $LC_MESSAGES, $LANG or another
system dependent environment variable to your language locale, usually specified in
the POSIX 1003.1 based format:
<language>[_<territory>[.<character-set>[,<version>]]]
If the desired page is available in your locale, it will be displayed in lieu of
the standard (usually American English) page.
Support for international message catalogues is also featured in this package and
can be activated in the same way, again if available. If you find that the manual
pages and message catalogues supplied with this package are not available in your
native language and you would like to supply them, please contact the maintainer
who will be coordinating such activity.
For information regarding other features and extensions available with this manual
pager, please read the documents supplied with the package.
DEFAULTS
man will search for the desired manual pages within the index database caches. If
the -u option is given, a cache consistency check is performed to ensure the data‐
bases accurately reflect the filesystem. If this option is always given, it is not
generally necessary to run mandb after the caches are initially created, unless a
cache becomes corrupt. However, the cache consistency check can be slow on systems
with many manual pages installed, so it is not performed by default, and system
administrators may wish to run mandb every week or so to keep the database caches
fresh. To forestall problems caused by outdated caches, man will fall back to file
globbing if a cache lookup fails, just as it would if no cache was present.
Once a manual page has been located, a check is performed to find out if a relative
preformatted `cat' file already exists and is newer than the nroff file. If it
does and is, this preformatted file is (usually) decompressed and then displayed,
via use of a pager. The pager can be specified in a number of ways, or else will
fall back to a default is used (see option -P for details). If no cat is found or
is older than the nroff file, the nroff is filtered through various programs and is
shown immediately.
If a cat file can be produced (a relative cat directory exists and has appropriate
permissions), man will compress and store the cat file in the background.
The filters are deciphered by a number of means. Firstly, the command line option
-p or the environment variable $MANROFFSEQ is interrogated. If -p was not used and
the environment variable was not set, the initial line of the nroff file is parsed
for a preprocessor string. To contain a valid preprocessor string, the first line
must resemble
'\" <string>
where string can be any combination of letters described by option -p below.
If none of the above methods provide any filter information, a default set is used.
A formatting pipeline is formed from the filters and the primary formatter (nroff
or [tg]roff with -t) and executed. Alternatively, if an executable program
mandb_nfmt (or mandb_tfmt with -t) exists in the man tree root, it is executed
instead. It gets passed the manual source file, the preprocessor string, and
optionally the device specified with -T or -E as arguments.
OPTIONS
Non argument options that are duplicated either on the command line, in $MANOPT, or
both, are not harmful. For options that require an argument, each duplication will
override the previous argument value.
General options
-C file, --config-file=file
Use this user configuration file rather than the default of ~/.manpath.
-d, --debug
Print debugging information.
-D, --default
This option is normally issued as the very first option and resets man's be‐
haviour to its default. Its use is to reset those options that may have
been set in $MANOPT. Any options that follow -D will have their usual
effect.
--warnings[=warnings]
Enable warnings from groff. This may be used to perform sanity checks on
the source text of manual pages. warnings is a comma-separated list of
warning names; if it is not supplied, the default is "mac". See the “Warn‐
ings” node in info groff for a list of available warning names.
Main modes of operation
-f, --whatis
Equivalent to whatis. Display a short description from the manual page, if
available. See whatis(1) for details.
-k, --apropos
Equivalent to apropos. Search the short manual page descriptions for key‐
words and display any matches. See apropos(1) for details.
-K, --global-apropos
Search for text in all manual pages. This is a brute-force search, and is
likely to take some time; if you can, you should specify a section to reduce
the number of pages that need to be searched. Search terms may be simple
strings (the default), or regular expressions if the --regex option is used.
-l, --local-file
Activate `local' mode. Format and display local manual files instead of
searching through the system's manual collection. Each manual page argument
will be interpreted as an nroff source file in the correct format. No cat
file is produced. If '-' is listed as one of the arguments, input will be
taken from stdin. When this option is not used, and man fails to find the
page required, before displaying the error message, it attempts to act as if
this option was supplied, using the name as a filename and looking for an
exact match.
-w, --where, --location
Don't actually display the manual pages, but do print the location(s) of the
source nroff files that would be formatted.
-W, --where-cat, --location-cat
Don't actually display the manual pages, but do print the location(s) of the
cat files that would be displayed. If -w and -W are both specified, print
both separated by a space.
-c, --catman
This option is not for general use and should only be used by the catman
program.
-R encoding, --recode=encoding
Instead of formatting the manual page in the usual way, output its source
converted to the specified encoding. If you already know the encoding of
the source file, you can also use manconv(1) directly. However, this option
allows you to convert several manual pages to a single encoding without hav‐
ing to explicitly state the encoding of each, provided that they were
already installed in a structure similar to a manual page hierarchy.
Finding manual pages
-L locale, --locale=locale
man will normally determine your current locale by a call to the C function
setlocale(3) which interrogates various environment variables, possibly
including $LC_MESSAGES and $LANG. To temporarily override the determined
value, use this option to supply a locale string directly to man. Note that
it will not take effect until the search for pages actually begins. Output
such as the help message will always be displayed in the initially deter‐
mined locale.
-m system[,...], --systems=system[,...]
If this system has access to other operating system's manual pages, they can
be accessed using this option. To search for a manual page from NewOS's
manual page collection, use the option -m NewOS.
The system specified can be a combination of comma delimited operating sys‐
tem names. To include a search of the native operating system's manual
pages, include the system name man in the argument string. This option will
override the $SYSTEM environment variable.
-M path, --manpath=path
Specify an alternate manpath to use. By default, man uses manpath derived
code to determine the path to search. This option overrides the $MANPATH
environment variable and causes option -m to be ignored.
A path specified as a manpath must be the root of a manual page hierarchy
structured into sections as described in the man-db manual (under "The man‐
ual page system"). To view manual pages outside such hierarchies, see the
-l option.
-S list, -s list, --sections=list
List is a colon- or comma-separated list of `order specific' manual sections
to search. This option overrides the $MANSECT environment variable. (The
-s spelling is for compatibility with System V.)
-e sub-extension, --extension=sub-extension
Some systems incorporate large packages of manual pages, such as those that
accompany the Tcl package, into the main manual page hierarchy. To get
around the problem of having two manual pages with the same name such as
exit(3), the Tcl pages were usually all assigned to section l. As this is
unfortunate, it is now possible to put the pages in the correct section, and
to assign a specific `extension' to them, in this case, exit(3tcl). Under
normal operation, man will display exit(3) in preference to exit(3tcl). To
negotiate this situation and to avoid having to know which section the page
you require resides in, it is now possible to give man a sub-extension
string indicating which package the page must belong to. Using the above
example, supplying the option -e tcl to man will restrict the search to
pages having an extension of *tcl.
-i, --ignore-case
Ignore case when searching for manual pages. This is the default.
-I, --match-case
Search for manual pages case-sensitively.
--regex
Show all pages with any part of either their names or their descriptions
matching each page argument as a regular expression, as with apropos(1).
Since there is usually no reasonable way to pick a "best" page when search‐
ing for a regular expression, this option implies -a.
--wildcard
Show all pages with any part of either their names or their descriptions
matching each page argument using shell-style wildcards, as with apropos(1)
--wildcard. The page argument must match the entire name or description, or
match on word boundaries in the description. Since there is usually no rea‐
sonable way to pick a "best" page when searching for a wildcard, this option
implies -a.
--names-only
If the --regex or --wildcard option is used, match only page names, not page
descriptions, as with whatis(1). Otherwise, no effect.
-a, --all
By default, man will exit after displaying the most suitable manual page it
finds. Using this option forces man to display all the manual pages with
names that match the search criteria.
-u, --update
This option causes man to perform an `inode level' consistency check on its
database caches to ensure that they are an accurate representation of the
filesystem. It will only have a useful effect if man is installed with the
setuid bit set.
--no-subpages
By default, man will try to interpret pairs of manual page names given on
the command line as equivalent to a single manual page name containing a
hyphen or an underscore. This supports the common pattern of programs that
implement a number of subcommands, allowing them to provide manual pages for
each that can be accessed using similar syntax as would be used to invoke
the subcommands themselves. For example:
$ man -aw git diff
/usr/share/man/man1/git-diff.1.gz
To disable this behaviour, use the --no-subpages option.
$ man -aw --no-subpages git diff
/usr/share/man/man1/git.1.gz
/usr/share/man/man3/Git.3pm.gz
/usr/share/man/man1/diff.1.gz
Controlling formatted output
-P pager, --pager=pager
Specify which output pager to use. By default, man uses pager -s. This
option overrides the $MANPAGER environment variable, which in turn overrides
the $PAGER environment variable. It is not used in conjunction with -f or
-k.
The value may be a simple command name or a command with arguments, and may
use shell quoting (backslashes, single quotes, or double quotes). It may
not use pipes to connect multiple commands; if you need that, use a wrapper
script, which may take the file to display either as an argument or on stan‐
dard input.
-r prompt, --prompt=prompt
If a recent version of less is used as the pager, man will attempt to set
its prompt and some sensible options. The default prompt looks like
Manual page name(sec) line x
where name denotes the manual page name, sec denotes the section it was
found under and x the current line number. This is achieved by using the
$LESS environment variable.
Supplying -r with a string will override this default. The string may con‐
tain the text $MAN_PN which will be expanded to the name of the current man‐
ual page and its section name surrounded by `(' and `)'. The string used to
produce the default could be expressed as
\ Manual\ page\ \$MAN_PN\ ?ltline\ %lt?L/%L.:
byte\ %bB?s/%s..?\ (END):?pB\ %pB\\%..
It is broken into two lines here for the sake of readability only. For its
meaning see the less(1) manual page. The prompt string is first evaluated
by the shell. All double quotes, back-quotes and backslashes in the prompt
must be escaped by a preceding backslash. The prompt string may end in an
escaped $ which may be followed by further options for less. By default man
sets the -ix8 options.
If you want to override man's prompt string processing completely, use the
$MANLESS environment variable described below.
-7, --ascii
When viewing a pure ascii(7) manual page on a 7 bit terminal or terminal
emulator, some characters may not display correctly when using the latin1(7)
device description with GNU nroff. This option allows pure ascii manual
pages to be displayed in ascii with the latin1 device. It will not trans‐
late any latin1 text. The following table shows the translations performed:
some parts of it may only be displayed properly when using GNU nroff's
latin1(7) device.
Description Octal latin1 ascii
─────────────────────────────────────────────
continuation hyphen 255 ‐ -
bullet (middle dot) 267 · o
acute accent 264 ´ '
multiplication sign 327 × x
If the latin1 column displays correctly, your terminal may be set up for
latin1 characters and this option is not necessary. If the latin1 and ascii
columns are identical, you are reading this page using this option or man
did not format this page using the latin1 device description. If the latin1
column is missing or corrupt, you may need to view manual pages with this
option.
This option is ignored when using options -t, -H, -T, or -Z and may be use‐
less for nroff other than GNU's.
-E encoding, --encoding=encoding
Generate output for a character encoding other than the default. For back‐
ward compatibility, encoding may be an nroff device such as ascii, latin1,
or utf8 as well as a true character encoding such as UTF-8.
--no-hyphenation, --nh
Normally, nroff will automatically hyphenate text at line breaks even in
words that do not contain hyphens, if it is necessary to do so to lay out
words on a line without excessive spacing. This option disables automatic
hyphenation, so words will only be hyphenated if they already contain
hyphens.
If you are writing a manual page and simply want to prevent nroff from
hyphenating a word at an inappropriate point, do not use this option, but
consult the nroff documentation instead; for instance, you can put "\%"
inside a word to indicate that it may be hyphenated at that point, or put
"\%" at the start of a word to prevent it from being hyphenated.
--no-justification, --nj
Normally, nroff will automatically justify text to both margins. This
option disables full justification, leaving justified only to the left mar‐
gin, sometimes called "ragged-right" text.
If you are writing a manual page and simply want to prevent nroff from jus‐
tifying certain paragraphs, do not use this option, but consult the nroff
documentation instead; for instance, you can use the ".na", ".nf", ".fi",
and ".ad" requests to temporarily disable adjusting and filling.
-p string, --preprocessor=string
Specify the sequence of preprocessors to run before nroff or troff/groff.
Not all installations will have a full set of preprocessors. Some of the
preprocessors and the letters used to designate them are: eqn (e), grap (g),
pic (p), tbl (t), vgrind (v), refer (r). This option overrides the $MAN‐
ROFFSEQ environment variable. zsoelim is always run as the very first pre‐
processor.
-t, --troff
Use groff -mandoc to format the manual page to stdout. This option is not
required in conjunction with -H, -T, or -Z.
-T[device], --troff-device[=device]
This option is used to change groff (or possibly troff's) output to be suit‐
able for a device other than the default. It implies -t. Examples (pro‐
vided with Groff-1.17) include dvi, latin1, ps, utf8, X75 and X100.
-H[browser], --html[=browser]
This option will cause groff to produce HTML output, and will display that
output in a web browser. The choice of browser is determined by the
optional browser argument if one is provided, by the $BROWSER environment
variable, or by a compile-time default if that is unset (usually lynx).
This option implies -t, and will only work with GNU troff.
-X[dpi], --gxditview[=dpi]
This option displays the output of groff in a graphical window using the
gxditview program. The dpi (dots per inch) may be 75, 75-12, 100, or
100-12, defaulting to 75; the -12 variants use a 12-point base font. This
option implies -T with the X75, X75-12, X100, or X100-12 device respec‐
tively.
-Z, --ditroff
groff will run troff and then use an appropriate post-processor to produce
output suitable for the chosen device. If groff -mandoc is groff, this
option is passed to groff and will suppress the use of a post-processor. It
implies -t.
Getting help
-h, --help
Print a help message and exit.
-V, --version
Display version information.
EXIT STATUS
0 Successful program execution.
1 Usage, syntax or configuration file error.
2 Operational error.
3 A child process returned a non-zero exit status.
16 At least one of the pages/files/keywords didn't exist or wasn't matched.
ENVIRONMENT
MANPATH
If $MANPATH is set, its value is used as the path to search for manual
pages.
MANROFFOPT
The contents of $MANROFFOPT are added to the command line every time man
invokes the formatter (nroff, troff, or groff).
MANROFFSEQ
If $MANROFFSEQ is set, its value is used to determine the set of preproces‐
sors to pass each manual page through. The default preprocessor list is
system dependent.
MANSECT
If $MANSECT is set, its value is a colon-delimited list of sections and it
is used to determine which manual sections to search and in what order.
MANPAGER, PAGER
If $MANPAGER or $PAGER is set ($MANPAGER is used in preference), its value
is used as the name of the program used to display the manual page. By
default, pager -s is used.
The value may be a simple command name or a command with arguments, and may
use shell quoting (backslashes, single quotes, or double quotes). It may
not use pipes to connect multiple commands; if you need that, use a wrapper
script, which may take the file to display either as an argument or on stan‐
dard input.
MANLESS
If $MANLESS is set, man will not perform any of its usual processing to set
up a prompt string for the less pager. Instead, the value of $MANLESS will
be copied verbatim into $LESS. For example, if you want to set the prompt
string unconditionally to “my prompt string”, set $MANLESS to
‘-Psmy prompt string’.
BROWSER
If $BROWSER is set, its value is a colon-delimited list of commands, each of
which in turn is used to try to start a web browser for man --html. In each
command, %s is replaced by a filename containing the HTML output from groff,
%% is replaced by a single percent sign (%), and %c is replaced by a colon
(:).
SYSTEM If $SYSTEM is set, it will have the same effect as if it had been specified
as the argument to the -m option.
MANOPT If $MANOPT is set, it will be parsed prior to man's command line and is
expected to be in a similar format. As all of the other man specific envi‐
ronment variables can be expressed as command line options, and are thus
candidates for being included in $MANOPT it is expected that they will
become obsolete. N.B. All spaces that should be interpreted as part of an
option's argument must be escaped.
MANWIDTH
If $MANWIDTH is set, its value is used as the line length for which manual
pages should be formatted. If it is not set, manual pages will be formatted
with a line length appropriate to the current terminal (using an ioctl(2) if
available, the value of $COLUMNS, or falling back to 80 characters if nei‐
ther is available). Cat pages will only be saved when the default format‐
ting can be used, that is when the terminal line length is between 66 and 80
characters.
MAN_KEEP_FORMATTING
Normally, when output is not being directed to a terminal (such as to a file
or a pipe), formatting characters are discarded to make it easier to read
the result without special tools. However, if $MAN_KEEP_FORMATTING is set
to any non-empty value, these formatting characters are retained. This may
be useful for wrappers around man that can interpret formatting characters.
MAN_KEEP_STDERR
Normally, when output is being directed to a terminal (usually to a pager),
any error output from the command used to produce formatted versions of man‐
ual pages is discarded to avoid interfering with the pager's display. Pro‐
grams such as groff often produce relatively minor error messages about
typographical problems such as poor alignment, which are unsightly and gen‐
erally confusing when displayed along with the manual page. However, some
users want to see them anyway, so, if $MAN_KEEP_STDERR is set to any non-
empty value, error output will be displayed as usual.
LANG, LC_MESSAGES
Depending on system and implementation, either or both of $LANG and $LC_MES‐
SAGES will be interrogated for the current message locale. man will display
its messages in that locale (if available). See setlocale(3) for precise
details.
FILES
/etc/manpath.config
man-db configuration file.
/usr/share/man
A global manual page hierarchy.
/usr/share/man/index.(bt|db|dir|pag)
A traditional global index database cache.
/var/cache/man/index.(bt|db|dir|pag)
An FHS compliant global index database cache.
SEE ALSO
mandb(8), manpath(1), manpath(5), apropos(1), whatis(1), catman(8), less(1),
nroff(1), troff(1), groff(1), zsoelim(1), setlocale(3), man(7), ascii(7),
latin1(7), the man-db package manual, FSSTND.
HISTORY
1990, 1991 - Originally written by John W. Eaton (jwe@che.utexas.edu).
Dec 23 1992: Rik Faith (faith@cs.unc.edu) applied bug fixes supplied by Willem Kas‐
dorp (wkasdo@nikhefk.nikef.nl).
30th April 1994 - 23rd February 2000: Wilf. (G.Wilford@ee.surrey.ac.uk) has been
developing and maintaining this package with the help of a few dedicated people.
30th October 1996 - 30th March 2001: Fabrizio Polacco <fpolacco@debian.org> main‐
tained and enhanced this package for the Debian project, with the help of all the
community.
31st March 2001 - present day: Colin Watson <cjwatson@debian.org> is now developing
and maintaining man-db.
2.5.9 2010-11-17 MAN(1)
NAME
man - an interface to the on-line reference manuals
man - 在线参考手册的接口
SYNOPSIS
man [-C file] [-d] [-D] [--warnings[=warnings]] [-R encoding] [-L locale] [-m sys‐
tem[,...]] [-M path] [-S list] [-e extension] [-i|-I] [--regex|--wildcard]
[--names-only] [-a] [-u] [--no-subpages] [-P pager] [-r prompt] [-7] [-E encoding]
[--no-hyphenation] [--no-justification] [-p string] [-t] [-T[device]] [-H[browser]]
[-X[dpi]] [-Z] [[section] page ...] ...
man -k [apropos options] regexp ...
man -K [-w|-W] [-S list] [-i|-I] [--regex] [section] term ...
man -f [whatis options] page ...
man -l [-C file] [-d] [-D] [--warnings[=warnings]] [-R encoding] [-L locale] [-P
pager] [-r prompt] [-7] [-E encoding] [-p string] [-t] [-T[device]] [-H[browser]]
[-X[dpi]] [-Z] file ...
man -w|-W [-C file] [-d] [-D] page ...
man -c [-C file] [-d] [-D] page ...
man [-hV]
DESCRIPTION
man is the system's manual pager. Each page argument given to man is normally the
name of a program, utility or function. The manual page associated with each of
these arguments is then found and displayed. A section, if provided, will direct
man to look only in that section of the manual. The default action is to search in
all of the available sections, following a pre-defined order and to show only the
first page found, even if page exists in several sections.
The table below shows the section numbers of the manual followed by the types of
pages they contain.
1 Executable programs or shell commands
2 System calls (functions provided by the kernel)
3 Library calls (functions within program libraries)
4 Special files (usually found in /dev)
5 File formats and conventions eg /etc/passwd
6 Games
7 Miscellaneous (including macro packages and conven‐
tions), e.g. man(7), groff(7)
8 System administration commands (usually only for root)
9 Kernel routines [Non standard]
A manual page consists of several sections.
Conventional section names include NAME, SYNOPSIS, CONFIGURATION, DESCRIPTION,
OPTIONS, EXIT STATUS, RETURN VALUE, ERRORS, ENVIRONMENT, FILES, VERSIONS, CONFORM‐
ING TO, NOTES, BUGS, EXAMPLE, AUTHORS, and SEE ALSO.
The following conventions apply to the SYNOPSIS section and can be used as a guide
in other sections.
bold text type exactly as shown.
italic text replace with appropriate argument.
[-abc] any or all arguments within [ ] are optional.
-a|-b options delimited by | cannot be used together.
argument ... argument is repeatable.
[expression] ... entire expression within [ ] is repeatable.
Exact rendering may vary depending on the output device. For instance, man will
usually not be able to render italics when running in a terminal, and will typi‐
cally use underlined or coloured text instead.
The command or function illustration is a pattern that should match all possible
invocations. In some cases it is advisable to illustrate several exclusive invoca‐
tions as is shown in the SYNOPSIS section of this manual page.
EXAMPLES
man ls
Display the manual page for the item (program) ls.
man -a intro
Display, in succession, all of the available intro manual pages contained
within the manual. It is possible to quit between successive displays or skip
any of them.
man -t alias | lpr -Pps
Format the manual page referenced by `alias', usually a shell manual page, into
the default troff or groff format and pipe it to the printer named ps. The
default output for groff is usually PostScript. man --help should advise as to
which processor is bound to the -t option.
man -l -Tdvi ./foo.1x.gz > ./foo.1x.dvi
This command will decompress and format the nroff source manual page
./foo.1x.gz into a device independent (dvi) file. The redirection is necessary
as the -T flag causes output to be directed to stdout with no pager. The out‐
put could be viewed with a program such as xdvi or further processed into Post‐
Script using a program such as dvips.
man -k printf
Search the short descriptions and manual page names for the keyword printf as
regular expression. Print out any matches. Equivalent to apropos -r printf.
man -f smail
Lookup the manual pages referenced by smail and print out the short descrip‐
tions of any found. Equivalent to whatis -r smail.
OVERVIEW
Many options are available to man in order to give as much flexibility as possible
to the user. Changes can be made to the search path, section order, output proces‐
sor, and other behaviours and operations detailed below.
If set, various environment variables are interrogated to determine the operation
of man. It is possible to set the `catch all' variable $MANOPT to any string in
command line format with the exception that any spaces used as part of an option's
argument must be escaped (preceded by a backslash). man will parse $MANOPT prior
to parsing its own command line. Those options requiring an argument will be over‐
ridden by the same options found on the command line. To reset all of the options
set in $MANOPT, -D can be specified as the initial command line option. This will
allow man to `forget' about the options specified in $MANOPT although they must
still have been valid.
The manual pager utilities packaged as man-db make extensive use of index database
caches. These caches contain information such as where each manual page can be
found on the filesystem and what its whatis (short one line description of the man
page) contains, and allow man to run faster than if it had to search the filesystem
each time to find the appropriate manual page. If requested using the -u option,
man will ensure that the caches remain consistent, which can obviate the need to
manually run software to update traditional whatis text databases.
If man cannot find a mandb initiated index database for a particular manual page
hierarchy, it will still search for the requested manual pages, although file glob‐
bing will be necessary to search within that hierarchy. If whatis or apropos fails
to find an index it will try to extract information from a traditional whatis data‐
base instead.
These utilities support compressed source nroff files having, by default, the
extensions of .Z, .z and .gz. It is possible to deal with any compression exten‐
sion, but this information must be known at compile time. Also, by default, any
cat pages produced are compressed using gzip. Each `global' manual page hierarchy
such as /usr/share/man or /usr/X11R6/man may have any directory as its cat page
hierarchy. Traditionally the cat pages are stored under the same hierarchy as the
man pages, but for reasons such as those specified in the File Hierarchy Standard
(FHS), it may be better to store them elsewhere. For details on how to do this,
please read manpath(5). For details on why to do this, read the standard.
International support is available with this package. Native language manual pages
are accessible (if available on your system) via use of locale functions. To acti‐
vate such support, it is necessary to set either $LC_MESSAGES, $LANG or another
system dependent environment variable to your language locale, usually specified in
the POSIX 1003.1 based format:
<language>[_<territory>[.<character-set>[,<version>]]]
If the desired page is available in your locale, it will be displayed in lieu of
the standard (usually American English) page.
Support for international message catalogues is also featured in this package and
can be activated in the same way, again if available. If you find that the manual
pages and message catalogues supplied with this package are not available in your
native language and you would like to supply them, please contact the maintainer
who will be coordinating such activity.
For information regarding other features and extensions available with this manual
pager, please read the documents supplied with the package.
DEFAULTS
man will search for the desired manual pages within the index database caches. If
the -u option is given, a cache consistency check is performed to ensure the data‐
bases accurately reflect the filesystem. If this option is always given, it is not
generally necessary to run mandb after the caches are initially created, unless a
cache becomes corrupt. However, the cache consistency check can be slow on systems
with many manual pages installed, so it is not performed by default, and system
administrators may wish to run mandb every week or so to keep the database caches
fresh. To forestall problems caused by outdated caches, man will fall back to file
globbing if a cache lookup fails, just as it would if no cache was present.
Once a manual page has been located, a check is performed to find out if a relative
preformatted `cat' file already exists and is newer than the nroff file. If it
does and is, this preformatted file is (usually) decompressed and then displayed,
via use of a pager. The pager can be specified in a number of ways, or else will
fall back to a default is used (see option -P for details). If no cat is found or
is older than the nroff file, the nroff is filtered through various programs and is
shown immediately.
If a cat file can be produced (a relative cat directory exists and has appropriate
permissions), man will compress and store the cat file in the background.
The filters are deciphered by a number of means. Firstly, the command line option
-p or the environment variable $MANROFFSEQ is interrogated. If -p was not used and
the environment variable was not set, the initial line of the nroff file is parsed
for a preprocessor string. To contain a valid preprocessor string, the first line
must resemble
'\" <string>
where string can be any combination of letters described by option -p below.
If none of the above methods provide any filter information, a default set is used.
A formatting pipeline is formed from the filters and the primary formatter (nroff
or [tg]roff with -t) and executed. Alternatively, if an executable program
mandb_nfmt (or mandb_tfmt with -t) exists in the man tree root, it is executed
instead. It gets passed the manual source file, the preprocessor string, and
optionally the device specified with -T or -E as arguments.
OPTIONS
Non argument options that are duplicated either on the command line, in $MANOPT, or
both, are not harmful. For options that require an argument, each duplication will
override the previous argument value.
General options
-C file, --config-file=file
Use this user configuration file rather than the default of ~/.manpath.
-d, --debug
Print debugging information.
-D, --default
This option is normally issued as the very first option and resets man's be‐
haviour to its default. Its use is to reset those options that may have
been set in $MANOPT. Any options that follow -D will have their usual
effect.
--warnings[=warnings]
Enable warnings from groff. This may be used to perform sanity checks on
the source text of manual pages. warnings is a comma-separated list of
warning names; if it is not supplied, the default is "mac". See the “Warn‐
ings” node in info groff for a list of available warning names.
Main modes of operation
-f, --whatis
Equivalent to whatis. Display a short description from the manual page, if
available. See whatis(1) for details.
-k, --apropos
Equivalent to apropos. Search the short manual page descriptions for key‐
words and display any matches. See apropos(1) for details.
-K, --global-apropos
Search for text in all manual pages. This is a brute-force search, and is
likely to take some time; if you can, you should specify a section to reduce
the number of pages that need to be searched. Search terms may be simple
strings (the default), or regular expressions if the --regex option is used.
-l, --local-file
Activate `local' mode. Format and display local manual files instead of
searching through the system's manual collection. Each manual page argument
will be interpreted as an nroff source file in the correct format. No cat
file is produced. If '-' is listed as one of the arguments, input will be
taken from stdin. When this option is not used, and man fails to find the
page required, before displaying the error message, it attempts to act as if
this option was supplied, using the name as a filename and looking for an
exact match.
-w, --where, --location
Don't actually display the manual pages, but do print the location(s) of the
source nroff files that would be formatted.
-W, --where-cat, --location-cat
Don't actually display the manual pages, but do print the location(s) of the
cat files that would be displayed. If -w and -W are both specified, print
both separated by a space.
-c, --catman
This option is not for general use and should only be used by the catman
program.
-R encoding, --recode=encoding
Instead of formatting the manual page in the usual way, output its source
converted to the specified encoding. If you already know the encoding of
the source file, you can also use manconv(1) directly. However, this option
allows you to convert several manual pages to a single encoding without hav‐
ing to explicitly state the encoding of each, provided that they were
already installed in a structure similar to a manual page hierarchy.
Finding manual pages
-L locale, --locale=locale
man will normally determine your current locale by a call to the C function
setlocale(3) which interrogates various environment variables, possibly
including $LC_MESSAGES and $LANG. To temporarily override the determined
value, use this option to supply a locale string directly to man. Note that
it will not take effect until the search for pages actually begins. Output
such as the help message will always be displayed in the initially deter‐
mined locale.
-m system[,...], --systems=system[,...]
If this system has access to other operating system's manual pages, they can
be accessed using this option. To search for a manual page from NewOS's
manual page collection, use the option -m NewOS.
The system specified can be a combination of comma delimited operating sys‐
tem names. To include a search of the native operating system's manual
pages, include the system name man in the argument string. This option will
override the $SYSTEM environment variable.
-M path, --manpath=path
Specify an alternate manpath to use. By default, man uses manpath derived
code to determine the path to search. This option overrides the $MANPATH
environment variable and causes option -m to be ignored.
A path specified as a manpath must be the root of a manual page hierarchy
structured into sections as described in the man-db manual (under "The man‐
ual page system"). To view manual pages outside such hierarchies, see the
-l option.
-S list, -s list, --sections=list
List is a colon- or comma-separated list of `order specific' manual sections
to search. This option overrides the $MANSECT environment variable. (The
-s spelling is for compatibility with System V.)
-e sub-extension, --extension=sub-extension
Some systems incorporate large packages of manual pages, such as those that
accompany the Tcl package, into the main manual page hierarchy. To get
around the problem of having two manual pages with the same name such as
exit(3), the Tcl pages were usually all assigned to section l. As this is
unfortunate, it is now possible to put the pages in the correct section, and
to assign a specific `extension' to them, in this case, exit(3tcl). Under
normal operation, man will display exit(3) in preference to exit(3tcl). To
negotiate this situation and to avoid having to know which section the page
you require resides in, it is now possible to give man a sub-extension
string indicating which package the page must belong to. Using the above
example, supplying the option -e tcl to man will restrict the search to
pages having an extension of *tcl.
-i, --ignore-case
Ignore case when searching for manual pages. This is the default.
-I, --match-case
Search for manual pages case-sensitively.
--regex
Show all pages with any part of either their names or their descriptions
matching each page argument as a regular expression, as with apropos(1).
Since there is usually no reasonable way to pick a "best" page when search‐
ing for a regular expression, this option implies -a.
--wildcard
Show all pages with any part of either their names or their descriptions
matching each page argument using shell-style wildcards, as with apropos(1)
--wildcard. The page argument must match the entire name or description, or
match on word boundaries in the description. Since there is usually no rea‐
sonable way to pick a "best" page when searching for a wildcard, this option
implies -a.
--names-only
If the --regex or --wildcard option is used, match only page names, not page
descriptions, as with whatis(1). Otherwise, no effect.
-a, --all
By default, man will exit after displaying the most suitable manual page it
finds. Using this option forces man to display all the manual pages with
names that match the search criteria.
-u, --update
This option causes man to perform an `inode level' consistency check on its
database caches to ensure that they are an accurate representation of the
filesystem. It will only have a useful effect if man is installed with the
setuid bit set.
--no-subpages
By default, man will try to interpret pairs of manual page names given on
the command line as equivalent to a single manual page name containing a
hyphen or an underscore. This supports the common pattern of programs that
implement a number of subcommands, allowing them to provide manual pages for
each that can be accessed using similar syntax as would be used to invoke
the subcommands themselves. For example:
$ man -aw git diff
/usr/share/man/man1/git-diff.1.gz
To disable this behaviour, use the --no-subpages option.
$ man -aw --no-subpages git diff
/usr/share/man/man1/git.1.gz
/usr/share/man/man3/Git.3pm.gz
/usr/share/man/man1/diff.1.gz
Controlling formatted output
-P pager, --pager=pager
Specify which output pager to use. By default, man uses pager -s. This
option overrides the $MANPAGER environment variable, which in turn overrides
the $PAGER environment variable. It is not used in conjunction with -f or
-k.
The value may be a simple command name or a command with arguments, and may
use shell quoting (backslashes, single quotes, or double quotes). It may
not use pipes to connect multiple commands; if you need that, use a wrapper
script, which may take the file to display either as an argument or on stan‐
dard input.
-r prompt, --prompt=prompt
If a recent version of less is used as the pager, man will attempt to set
its prompt and some sensible options. The default prompt looks like
Manual page name(sec) line x
where name denotes the manual page name, sec denotes the section it was
found under and x the current line number. This is achieved by using the
$LESS environment variable.
Supplying -r with a string will override this default. The string may con‐
tain the text $MAN_PN which will be expanded to the name of the current man‐
ual page and its section name surrounded by `(' and `)'. The string used to
produce the default could be expressed as
\ Manual\ page\ \$MAN_PN\ ?ltline\ %lt?L/%L.:
byte\ %bB?s/%s..?\ (END):?pB\ %pB\\%..
It is broken into two lines here for the sake of readability only. For its
meaning see the less(1) manual page. The prompt string is first evaluated
by the shell. All double quotes, back-quotes and backslashes in the prompt
must be escaped by a preceding backslash. The prompt string may end in an
escaped $ which may be followed by further options for less. By default man
sets the -ix8 options.
If you want to override man's prompt string processing completely, use the
$MANLESS environment variable described below.
-7, --ascii
When viewing a pure ascii(7) manual page on a 7 bit terminal or terminal
emulator, some characters may not display correctly when using the latin1(7)
device description with GNU nroff. This option allows pure ascii manual
pages to be displayed in ascii with the latin1 device. It will not trans‐
late any latin1 text. The following table shows the translations performed:
some parts of it may only be displayed properly when using GNU nroff's
latin1(7) device.
Description Octal latin1 ascii
─────────────────────────────────────────────
continuation hyphen 255 ‐ -
bullet (middle dot) 267 · o
acute accent 264 ´ '
multiplication sign 327 × x
If the latin1 column displays correctly, your terminal may be set up for
latin1 characters and this option is not necessary. If the latin1 and ascii
columns are identical, you are reading this page using this option or man
did not format this page using the latin1 device description. If the latin1
column is missing or corrupt, you may need to view manual pages with this
option.
This option is ignored when using options -t, -H, -T, or -Z and may be use‐
less for nroff other than GNU's.
-E encoding, --encoding=encoding
Generate output for a character encoding other than the default. For back‐
ward compatibility, encoding may be an nroff device such as ascii, latin1,
or utf8 as well as a true character encoding such as UTF-8.
--no-hyphenation, --nh
Normally, nroff will automatically hyphenate text at line breaks even in
words that do not contain hyphens, if it is necessary to do so to lay out
words on a line without excessive spacing. This option disables automatic
hyphenation, so words will only be hyphenated if they already contain
hyphens.
If you are writing a manual page and simply want to prevent nroff from
hyphenating a word at an inappropriate point, do not use this option, but
consult the nroff documentation instead; for instance, you can put "\%"
inside a word to indicate that it may be hyphenated at that point, or put
"\%" at the start of a word to prevent it from being hyphenated.
--no-justification, --nj
Normally, nroff will automatically justify text to both margins. This
option disables full justification, leaving justified only to the left mar‐
gin, sometimes called "ragged-right" text.
If you are writing a manual page and simply want to prevent nroff from jus‐
tifying certain paragraphs, do not use this option, but consult the nroff
documentation instead; for instance, you can use the ".na", ".nf", ".fi",
and ".ad" requests to temporarily disable adjusting and filling.
-p string, --preprocessor=string
Specify the sequence of preprocessors to run before nroff or troff/groff.
Not all installations will have a full set of preprocessors. Some of the
preprocessors and the letters used to designate them are: eqn (e), grap (g),
pic (p), tbl (t), vgrind (v), refer (r). This option overrides the $MAN‐
ROFFSEQ environment variable. zsoelim is always run as the very first pre‐
processor.
-t, --troff
Use groff -mandoc to format the manual page to stdout. This option is not
required in conjunction with -H, -T, or -Z.
-T[device], --troff-device[=device]
This option is used to change groff (or possibly troff's) output to be suit‐
able for a device other than the default. It implies -t. Examples (pro‐
vided with Groff-1.17) include dvi, latin1, ps, utf8, X75 and X100.
-H[browser], --html[=browser]
This option will cause groff to produce HTML output, and will display that
output in a web browser. The choice of browser is determined by the
optional browser argument if one is provided, by the $BROWSER environment
variable, or by a compile-time default if that is unset (usually lynx).
This option implies -t, and will only work with GNU troff.
-X[dpi], --gxditview[=dpi]
This option displays the output of groff in a graphical window using the
gxditview program. The dpi (dots per inch) may be 75, 75-12, 100, or
100-12, defaulting to 75; the -12 variants use a 12-point base font. This
option implies -T with the X75, X75-12, X100, or X100-12 device respec‐
tively.
-Z, --ditroff
groff will run troff and then use an appropriate post-processor to produce
output suitable for the chosen device. If groff -mandoc is groff, this
option is passed to groff and will suppress the use of a post-processor. It
implies -t.
Getting help
-h, --help
Print a help message and exit.
-V, --version
Display version information.
EXIT STATUS
0 Successful program execution.
1 Usage, syntax or configuration file error.
2 Operational error.
3 A child process returned a non-zero exit status.
16 At least one of the pages/files/keywords didn't exist or wasn't matched.
ENVIRONMENT
MANPATH
If $MANPATH is set, its value is used as the path to search for manual
pages.
MANROFFOPT
The contents of $MANROFFOPT are added to the command line every time man
invokes the formatter (nroff, troff, or groff).
MANROFFSEQ
If $MANROFFSEQ is set, its value is used to determine the set of preproces‐
sors to pass each manual page through. The default preprocessor list is
system dependent.
MANSECT
If $MANSECT is set, its value is a colon-delimited list of sections and it
is used to determine which manual sections to search and in what order.
MANPAGER, PAGER
If $MANPAGER or $PAGER is set ($MANPAGER is used in preference), its value
is used as the name of the program used to display the manual page. By
default, pager -s is used.
The value may be a simple command name or a command with arguments, and may
use shell quoting (backslashes, single quotes, or double quotes). It may
not use pipes to connect multiple commands; if you need that, use a wrapper
script, which may take the file to display either as an argument or on stan‐
dard input.
MANLESS
If $MANLESS is set, man will not perform any of its usual processing to set
up a prompt string for the less pager. Instead, the value of $MANLESS will
be copied verbatim into $LESS. For example, if you want to set the prompt
string unconditionally to “my prompt string”, set $MANLESS to
‘-Psmy prompt string’.
BROWSER
If $BROWSER is set, its value is a colon-delimited list of commands, each of
which in turn is used to try to start a web browser for man --html. In each
command, %s is replaced by a filename containing the HTML output from groff,
%% is replaced by a single percent sign (%), and %c is replaced by a colon
(:).
SYSTEM If $SYSTEM is set, it will have the same effect as if it had been specified
as the argument to the -m option.
MANOPT If $MANOPT is set, it will be parsed prior to man's command line and is
expected to be in a similar format. As all of the other man specific envi‐
ronment variables can be expressed as command line options, and are thus
candidates for being included in $MANOPT it is expected that they will
become obsolete. N.B. All spaces that should be interpreted as part of an
option's argument must be escaped.
MANWIDTH
If $MANWIDTH is set, its value is used as the line length for which manual
pages should be formatted. If it is not set, manual pages will be formatted
with a line length appropriate to the current terminal (using an ioctl(2) if
available, the value of $COLUMNS, or falling back to 80 characters if nei‐
ther is available). Cat pages will only be saved when the default format‐
ting can be used, that is when the terminal line length is between 66 and 80
characters.
MAN_KEEP_FORMATTING
Normally, when output is not being directed to a terminal (such as to a file
or a pipe), formatting characters are discarded to make it easier to read
the result without special tools. However, if $MAN_KEEP_FORMATTING is set
to any non-empty value, these formatting characters are retained. This may
be useful for wrappers around man that can interpret formatting characters.
MAN_KEEP_STDERR
Normally, when output is being directed to a terminal (usually to a pager),
any error output from the command used to produce formatted versions of man‐
ual pages is discarded to avoid interfering with the pager's display. Pro‐
grams such as groff often produce relatively minor error messages about
typographical problems such as poor alignment, which are unsightly and gen‐
erally confusing when displayed along with the manual page. However, some
users want to see them anyway, so, if $MAN_KEEP_STDERR is set to any non-
empty value, error output will be displayed as usual.
LANG, LC_MESSAGES
Depending on system and implementation, either or both of $LANG and $LC_MES‐
SAGES will be interrogated for the current message locale. man will display
its messages in that locale (if available). See setlocale(3) for precise
details.
FILES
/etc/manpath.config
man-db configuration file.
/usr/share/man
A global manual page hierarchy.
/usr/share/man/index.(bt|db|dir|pag)
A traditional global index database cache.
/var/cache/man/index.(bt|db|dir|pag)
An FHS compliant global index database cache.
SEE ALSO
mandb(8), manpath(1), manpath(5), apropos(1), whatis(1), catman(8), less(1),
nroff(1), troff(1), groff(1), zsoelim(1), setlocale(3), man(7), ascii(7),
latin1(7), the man-db package manual, FSSTND.
HISTORY
1990, 1991 - Originally written by John W. Eaton (jwe@che.utexas.edu).
Dec 23 1992: Rik Faith (faith@cs.unc.edu) applied bug fixes supplied by Willem Kas‐
dorp (wkasdo@nikhefk.nikef.nl).
30th April 1994 - 23rd February 2000: Wilf. (G.Wilford@ee.surrey.ac.uk) has been
developing and maintaining this package with the help of a few dedicated people.
30th October 1996 - 30th March 2001: Fabrizio Polacco <fpolacco@debian.org> main‐
tained and enhanced this package for the Debian project, with the help of all the
community.
31st March 2001 - present day: Colin Watson <cjwatson@debian.org> is now developing
and maintaining man-db.
2.5.9 2010-11-17 MAN(1)
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