06-02-2011
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.
These 5 Users Gave Thanks to cambridge For This Post:
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LEARN ABOUT OPENSOLARIS
apropos
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)