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Full Discussion: How to write a UNIX man page
Top Forums UNIX for Advanced & Expert Users How to write a UNIX man page Post 302526966 by cambridge on Thursday 2nd of June 2011 03:36:46 AM
Old 06-02-2011
Java How to write a UNIX man page

I realise that with GNU 'info' a lot of developers become, dare I say it, quite lazy when it comes to providing a well written man page - and some argue they're not needed at all. But I find, in the products that I develop, that man pages are used more often for quick reference, and therefore the quality and usability of a product can be improved by providing well written man pages.

To that end, and because I've been writing man pages myself for over 10 years, I've decided to provide some notes for beginners on how to write your own man page. I hope this article is of help to the wider developer community:

Technical Prose: How to write a UNIX man page

Best regards,
Mark.
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apropos(1)							   User Commands							apropos(1)

NAME
apropos - locate commands by keyword lookup SYNOPSIS
apropos keyword... DESCRIPTION
The apropos utility displays the man page name, section number, and a short description for each man page whose NAME line contains keyword. This information is contained in the /usr/share/man/windex database created by catman(1M). If catman(1M) was not run, or was run with the -n option, apropos fails. Each word is considered separately and the case of letters is ignored. Words which are part of other words are considered; for example, when looking for `compile', apropos finds all instances of `compiler' also. apropos is actually just the -k option to the man(1) command. EXAMPLES
Example 1 To find a man page whose NAME line contains a keyword Try example% apropos password and example% apropos editor If the line starts `filename(section) ...' you can run man -s section filename to display the man page for filename. Example 2 To find the man page for the subroutine printf() Try example% apropos format and then example% man -s 3s printf to get the manual page on the subroutine printf(). FILES
/usr/share/man/windex table of contents and keyword database ATTRIBUTES
See attributes(5) for descriptions of the following attributes: +-----------------------------+-----------------------------+ | ATTRIBUTE TYPE | ATTRIBUTE VALUE | +-----------------------------+-----------------------------+ |Availability |SUNWdoc | +-----------------------------+-----------------------------+ |CSI |Enabled | +-----------------------------+-----------------------------+ SEE ALSO
man(1), whatis(1), catman(1M), attributes(5) DIAGNOSTICS
/usr/share/man/windex: No such file or directory This database does not exist. catman(1M) must be run to create it. SunOS 5.11 20 Dec 1996 apropos(1)
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