Ubuntu Manpage: man — display manual pages

NAME

       man — display manual pages

SYNOPSIS

       man [-acfhklw] [-C file] [-M path] [-m path] [-S subsection] [[-s] section] name ...

DESCRIPTION

The man utility displays the manual page entitled name. Pages may be selected according to a specific
category (section) or machine architecture (subsection).

The options are as follows:

-a Display all matching manual pages.

-C file
Use the specified file instead of the default configuration file. This permits users to
configure their own manual environment. See man.conf(5) for a description of the contents of
this file.

-c Copy the manual page to the standard output instead of using less(1) to paginate it. This is
done by default if the standard output is not a terminal device.

When using -c, most terminal devices are unable to show the markup. To print the output of man
to the terminal with markup but without using a pager, pipe it to ul(1). To remove the markup,
pipe the output to col(1) -b instead.

-f A synonym for whatis(1). It searches for name in manual page names and displays the header lines
from all matching pages. The search is case insensitive and matches whole words only.

-h Display only the SYNOPSIS lines of the requested manual pages. Implies -a and -c.

-k A synonym for apropos(1). Instead of name, an expression can be provided using the syntax
described in the apropos(1) manual. By default, it displays the header lines of all matching
pages.

-l A synonym for mandoc(1). The name arguments are interpreted as filenames. No search is done and
file, path, section, subsection, and -w are ignored. This option implies -a.

-M path
Override the list of directories to search for manual pages. The supplied path must be a colon
(‘:’) separated list of directories. This option also overrides the environment variable MANPATH
and any directories specified in the man.conf(5) file.

-m path
Augment the list of directories to search for manual pages. The supplied path must be a colon
(‘:’) separated list of directories. These directories will be searched before those specified
using the -M option, the MANPATH environment variable, the man.conf(5) file, or the default
directories.

-S subsection
Only show pages for the specified machine(1) architecture. subsection is case insensitive.

By default manual pages for all architectures are installed. Therefore this option can be used
to view pages for one architecture whilst using another.

This option overrides the MACHINE environment variable.

[-s] section
Only select manuals from the specified section. The currently available sections are:

1 General commands (tools and utilities).
2 System calls and error numbers.
3 Library functions.
3p perl(1) programmer's reference guide.
4 Device drivers.
5 File formats.
6 Games.
7 Miscellaneous information.
8 System maintenance and operation commands.
9 Kernel internals.

-w List the pathnames of all matching manual pages instead of displaying any of them. If no name is
given, list the directories that would be searched.

The options -IKOTW are also supported and are documented in mandoc(1). The options -fkl are mutually
exclusive and override each other.

The search starts with the -m argument if provided, then continues with the -M argument, the MANPATH
variable, the manpath entries in the man.conf(5) file, or with
/usr/share/man:/usr/X11R6/man:/usr/local/man by default. Within each of these, directories are searched
in the order provided. Within each directory, the search proceeds according to the following list of
sections: 1, 8, 6, 2, 3, 5, 7, 4, 9, 3p. The first match found is shown.

The mandoc.db(5) database is used for looking up manual page entries. In cases where the database is
absent, outdated, or corrupt, man falls back to looking for files called name.section. If both a
formatted and an unformatted version of the same manual page, for example cat1/foo.0 and man1/foo.1,
exist in the same directory, only the unformatted version is used. The database is kept up to date with
makewhatis(8), which is run by the weekly(8) maintenance script.

Guidelines for writing man pages can be found in mdoc(7).

ENVIRONMENT

MACHINE As some manual pages are intended only for specific architectures, man searches any
subdirectories, with the same name as the current architecture, in every directory which it
searches. Machine specific areas are checked before general areas. The current machine type
may be overridden by setting the environment variable MACHINE to the name of a specific
architecture, or with the -S option. MACHINE is case insensitive.

MANPAGER Any non-empty value of the environment variable MANPAGER is used instead of the standard
pagination program, less(1). If less(1) is used, the interactive :t command can be used to go
to the definitions of various terms, for example command line options, command modifiers,
internal commands, environment variables, function names, preprocessor macros, errno(2) values,
and some other emphasized words. Some terms may have defining text at more than one place. In
that case, the less(1) interactive commands t and T can be used to move to the next and to the
previous place providing information about the term last searched for with :t. The -O
tag[=term] option documented in the mandoc(1) manual opens a manual page at the definition of a
specific term rather than at the beginning.

MANPATH Override the standard search path which is either specified in man.conf(5) or the default path.
The format of MANPATH is a colon (‘:’) separated list of directories. Invalid directories are
ignored. Overridden by -M, ignored if -l is specified.

If MANPATH begins with a colon, it is appended to the standard path; if it ends with a colon,
it is prepended to the standard path; or if it contains two adjacent colons, the standard path
is inserted between the colons.

PAGER Specifies the pagination program to use when MANPAGER is not defined. If neither PAGER nor
MANPAGER is defined, less(1) is used.

FILES

       /etc/man.conf  default man configuration file

EXIT STATUS

       The man utility exits 0 on success, and >0 if an error occurs.  See mandoc(1) for details.

EXAMPLES

       Format a page for pasting extracts into an email message — avoid printing any  UTF-8  characters,  reduce
       the width to ease quoting in replies, and remove markup:

             $ man -T ascii -O width=65 pledge | col -b

       Read a typeset page in a PDF viewer:

             $ MANPAGER=mupdf man -T pdf lpd

STANDARDS

       The man utility is compliant with the IEEE Std 1003.1-2008 (“POSIX.1”) specification.

       The  flags  [-aCcfhIKlMmOSsTWw], as well as the environment variables MACHINE, MANPAGER, and MANPATH, are
       extensions to that specification.

HISTORY

       A man command first appeared in Version 2 AT&T UNIX.

       The -w option first appeared in Version 7 AT&T UNIX; -f and -k in 4BSD; -M in 4.3BSD; -a in 4.3BSD-Tahoe;
       -c and -m in 4.3BSD-Reno; -h in 4.3BSD Net/2; -C in NetBSD 1.0; -s and -S in OpenBSD 2.3; and -I, -K, -l,
       -O, and -W in OpenBSD 5.7.  The -T option first appeared in AT&T System III UNIX and was  also  added  in
       OpenBSD 5.7.

Debian                                            July 20, 2020                                           MAN(1)