man(1) [bsd man page]

MAN(1)							      General Commands Manual							    MAN(1)

NAME

       man - print out the manual

SYNOPSIS

       man [ - ] [ -a ] [ -M path ] [ section ] title ...

DESCRIPTION

       Man  is	the  program  which provides on-line access to the UNIX manual.  If a section specifier is given, man looks in that section of the
       manual for the given title(s).  Section is either an Arabic section number (``3'' for example), or one of the words ``local'', ``new,''	or
       ``old''.   (The	abbreviations  ``l'', ``n'', and ``o'' are also allowed.)  If section is omitted, man searches all sections of the manual,
       giving preference to commands over library subroutines, and displays the first manual page it finds, if any.  If the -a option is supplied,
       man displays all applicable manual pages.

       Normally  man checks in standard locations (/usr/man and /usr/local/man) for manual information.  This can be changed by supplying a search
       path (a la the Bourne shell) with the -M flag.  The search path is a colon (``:'') separated list of directories in which  man  expects	to
       find the standard manual subdirectories.  This search path can also be set with the environmental variable MANPATH.

       Since  some  manual  pages  are	intended  for  use only on certain machines, man only searches those directories applicable to the current
       machine.  Man's determination of the current machine type can be overridden by setting the environmental variable MACHINE.

       If the standard output is a teletype, and the - flag is not provided, man uses more(1), or the pager provided by the environmental variable
       PAGER, to display the manual page.

       The  FORTRAN version of section 3 of the manual may be specified by supplying man with the section ``3f''.  Also, a specific section of the
       local manual may be specified by appending a number to the section, i.e. ``l5'' would indicate section 5 of the local manual.

FILES

       /usr/man 	       standard manual area
       /usr/man/cat?/*	       directories containing standard manual pages
       /usr/local/man/cat?/*   directories containing local manual pages
       /usr/src/man	       directories containing unformatted manual pages

SEE ALSO

       apropos(1), more(1), whatis(1), whereis(1)

BUGS

       The manual is supposed to be reproducible either on the phototypesetter or on a typewriter, however, on a typewriter, some  information	is
       necessarily lost.

4th Berkeley Distribution					  April 19, 1988							    MAN(1)

CATMAN(8)						      System Manager's Manual							 CATMAN(8)

NAME

       catman - create the cat files for the manual

SYNOPSIS

       /usr/sbin/catman [ -p ] [ -n ] [ -w ] [ -M path ] [ sections ]

DESCRIPTION

       Catman  creates	the  preformatted versions of the on-line manual from the nroff input files.  Each manual page is examined and those whose
       preformatted versions are missing or out of date are recreated.	If any changes are made, catman will recreate the whatis database.

       If there is one parameter not starting with a `-', it is taken to be a list of manual sections to look in.  For example

	      catman 123

       will cause the updating to only happen to manual sections 1, 2, and 3.

       Options:

       -n     prevents creations of the whatis database.

       -p     prints what would be done instead of doing it.

       -w     causes only the whatis database to be created.  No manual reformatting is done.

       -M     updates manual pages located in the set of directories specified by path (/usr/man by default).  Path has the form of a colon  (`:')
	      separated  list  of directory names, for example `/usr/local/man:/usr/man'.  If the environment variable `MANPATH' is set, its value
	      is used for the default path.

       If the nroff source file contains only a line of the form `.so manx/yyy.x', a symbolic link is made in the catx directory to the  appropri-
       ate  preformatted manual page.  This feature allows easy distribution of the preformatted manual pages among a group of associated machines
       with rdist(1).  The nroff sources need not be distributed to all machines, thus saving the associated disk space.  As an example,  consider
       a  local  network  with	5 machines, called mach1 through mach5.  Suppose mach3 has the manual page nroff sources.  Every night, mach3 runs
       catman via cron(8) and later runs rdist with a distfile that looks like:

	      MANSLAVES = ( mach1 mach2 mach4 mach5 )

	      MANUALS = (/usr/man/cat[1-8no] /usr/man/whatis)

	      ${MANUALS} -> ${MANSLAVES}
		      install -R;
		      notify root;

FILES

       /usr/man 	      default manual directory location
       /usr/man/man?/*.*      raw (nroff input) manual sections
       /usr/man/cat?/*.*      preformatted manual pages
       /usr/man/whatis	      whatis database
       /usr/sbin/makewhatis   command script to make whatis database

SEE ALSO

       man(1), cron(8), rdist(1)

BUGS

       Acts oddly on nights with full moons.

       The need for catman(8) is almost but not quite gone.  Most of the manpages have been moved out of /usr/src/man into the sourcecode  hierar-
       chy.  The recreation of the whatis database is the main use of catman now.

4th Berkeley Distribution					 October 23, 1996							 CATMAN(8)