man(1)							      General Commands Manual							    man(1)

NAME

       man - format and display the on-line manual pages
       manpath - determine user's search path for man pages

SYNOPSIS

       man [-acdfFhkKtwW] [--path] [-m system] [-p string] [-C config_file] [-M pathlist] [-P pager] [-S section_list] [section] name ...

DESCRIPTION

       man formats and displays the on-line manual pages.  If you specify section, man only looks in that section of the manual.  name is normally
       the name of the manual page, which is typically the name of a command, function, or file.  However, if name contains a slash (/)  then  man
       interprets it as a file specification, so that you can do man ./foo.5 or even man /cd/foo/bar.1.gz.

       See below for a description of where man looks for the manual page files.

OPTIONS

       -C  config_file
	      Specify the configuration file to use; the default is /etc/man.config.  (See man.conf(5).)

       -M  path
	      Specify  the  list  of directories to search for man pages.  Separate the directories with colons.  An empty list is the same as not
	      specifying -M at all.  See SEARCH PATH FOR MANUAL PAGES.

       -P  pager
	      Specify which pager to use.  This option overrides the MANPAGER environment variable, which in turn overrides  the  PAGER  variable.
	      By default, man uses /usr/bin/less -isr.

       -S  section_list
	      List is a colon separated list of manual sections to search.  This option overrides the MANSECT environment variable.

       -a     By  default,  man will exit after displaying the first manual page it finds.  Using this option forces man to display all the manual
	      pages that match name, not just the first.

       -c     Reformat the source man page, even when an up-to-date cat page exists.  This can be meaningful if the cat page was formatted  for  a
	      screen with a different number of columns, or if the preformatted page is corrupted.

       -d     Don't actually display the man pages, but do print gobs of debugging information.

       -D     Both display and print debugging info.

       -f     Equivalent to whatis.

       -F or --preformat
	      Format only - do not display.

       -h     Print a one-line help message and exit.

       -k     Equivalent to apropos.

       -K     Search  for  the	specified string in *all* man pages. Warning: this is probably very slow! It helps to specify a section.  (Just to
	      give a rough idea, on my machine this takes about a minute per 500 man pages.)

       -m  system
	      Specify an alternate set of man pages to search based on the system name given.

       -p  string
	      Specify the sequence of preprocessors to run before nroff or troff.  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 MANROFFSEQ environment variable.

       -t     Use /usr/bin/groff -Tps -mandoc to format the manual page, passing the output to stdout.	The output from /usr/bin/groff -Tps  -man-
	      doc may need to be passed through some filter or another before being printed.

       -w or --path
	      Don't actually display the man pages, but do print the location(s) of the files that would be formatted or displayed. If no argument
	      is given: display (on stdout) the list of directories that is searched by man for man pages. If manpath is a link to man, then "man-
	      path" is equivalent to "man --path".

       -W     Like  -w,  but  print  file names one per line, without additional information.  This is useful in shell commands like man -aW man |
	      xargs ls -l

CAT PAGES

       Man will try to save the formatted man pages, in order to save formatting time the next time these pages are needed.   Traditionally,  for-
       matted versions of pages in DIR/manX are saved in DIR/catX, but other mappings from man dir to cat dir can be specified in /etc/man.config.
       No cat pages are saved when the required cat directory does not exist.  No cat pages are saved when they are formatted for  a  line  length
       different from 80.  No cat pages are saved when man.conf contains the line NOCACHE.

       It  is  possible  to  make man suid to a user man. Then, if a cat directory has owner man and mode 0755 (only writable by man), and the cat
       files have owner man and mode 0644 or 0444 (only writable by man, or not writable at all), no ordinary user can change the cat pages or put
       other  files in the cat directory. If man is not made suid, then a cat directory should have mode 0777 if all users should be able to leave
       cat pages there.

       The option -c forces reformatting a page, even if a recent cat page exists.

SEARCH PATH FOR MANUAL PAGES

       man uses a sophisticated method of finding manual page files, based on the invocation options and environment variables, the  /etc/man.con-
       fig configuration file, and some built in conventions and heuristics.

       First  of all, when the name argument to man contains a slash (/), man assumes it is a file specification itself, and there is no searching
       involved.

       But in the normal case where name doesn't contain a slash, man searches a variety of directories for a file that could be a manual page for
       the topic named.

       If you specify the -M pathlist option, pathlist is a colon-separated list of the directories that man searches.

       If  you	don't  specify	-M  but  set  the MANPATH environment variable, the value of that variable is the list of the directories that man
       searches.

       If you don't specify an explicit path list with -M or MANPATH, man develops its own path list based on the contents  of	the  configuration
       file /etc/man.config.  The MANPATH statements in the configuration file identify particular directories to include in the search path.

       Furthermore, the MANPATH_MAP statements add to the search path depending on your command search path (i.e. your PATH environment variable).
       For each directory that may be in the command search path, a MANPATH_MAP statement specifies a directory that should be added to the search
       path  for  manual  page	files.	man looks at the PATH variable and adds the corresponding directories to the manual page file search path.
       Thus, with the proper use of MANPATH_MAP, when you issue the command man xyz, you get a manual page for the program that would run  if  you
       issued the command xyz.

       In  addition,  for  each directory in the command search path (we'll call it a "command directory") for which you do not have a MANPATH_MAP
       statement, man automatically looks for a manual page directory "nearby" namely as a subdirectory in the command directory itself or in  the
       parent directory of the command directory.

       You can disable the automatic "nearby" searches by including a NOAUTOPATH statement in /etc/man.config.

       In  each  directory in the search path as described above, man searches for a file named topic.section, with an optional suffix on the sec-
       tion number and possibly a compression suffix.  If it doesn't find such a file, it then looks in any  subdirectories  named  manN  or  catN
       where  N  is  the manual section number.  If the file is in a catN subdirectory, man assumes it is a formatted manual page file (cat page).
       Otherwise, man assumes it is unformatted.  In either case, if the filename has a known compression suffix (like .gz),  man  assumes  it	is
       gzipped.

       If you want to see where (or if) man would find the manual page for a particular topic, use the --path (-w) option.

ENVIRONMENT

       MANPATH
	      If  MANPATH  is set, man uses it as the path to search for manual page files.  It overrides the configuration file and the automatic
	      search path, but is overridden by the -M invocation option.  See SEARCH PATH FOR MANUAL PAGES.

       MANPL  If MANPL is set, its value is used as the display page length.  Otherwise, the entire man page will occupy one (long) page.

       MANROFFSEQ
	      If MANROFFSEQ is set, its value is used to determine the set of preprocessors run before running nroff or troff.	By default,  pages
	      are passed through the tbl preprocessor before nroff.

       MANSECT
	      If MANSECT is set, its value is used to determine which manual sections to search.

       MANWIDTH
	      If  MANWIDTH  is	set,  its  value is used as the width manpages should be displayed.  Otherwise the pages may be displayed over the
	      whole width of your screen.

       MANPAGER
	      If MANPAGER is set, its value is used as the name of the program to use to display the man page.	If not, then  PAGER  is  used.	If
	      that has no value either, /usr/bin/less -isr is used.

       LANG   If LANG is set, its value defines the name of the subdirectory where man first looks for man pages. Thus, the command `LANG=dk man 1
	      foo' will cause man to look for the foo man page in .../dk/man1/foo.1, and if it cannot find such a file,  then  in  .../man1/foo.1,
	      where ... is a directory on the search path.

       NLSPATH, LC_MESSAGES, LANG
	      The environment variables NLSPATH and LC_MESSAGES (or LANG when the latter does not exist) play a role in locating the message cata-
	      log.  (But the English messages are compiled in, and for English no catalog is required.)  Note that programs like col(1) called	by
	      man also use e.g. LC_CTYPE.

       PATH   PATH helps determine the search path for manual page files.  See SEARCH PATH FOR MANUAL PAGES.

       SYSTEM SYSTEM is used to get the default alternate system name (for use with the -m option).

SEE ALSO

       apropos(1), whatis(1), less(1), groff(1), man.config(5).

BUGS

       The -t option only works if a troff-like program is installed.
       If you see blinking 255 or <AD> instead of hyphens, put `LESSCHARSET=latin1' in your environment.

TIPS

       If you add the line

	 (global-set-key [(f1)] (lambda () (interactive) (manual-entry (current-word))))

       to your .emacs file, then hitting F1 will give you the man page for the library call at the current cursor position.

       To get a plain text version of a man page, without backspaces and underscores, try

	 # man foo | col -b > foo.mantxt

								 September 2, 1995							    man(1)