MAN(1) BSD General Commands Manual MAN(1)NAMEman — display the on-line manual pages (aka “man pages”)
SYNOPSISman [-acw|-h] [-C file] [-M path] [-m path] [-S srch] [[-s] section] name
...
man [-k] [-C file] [-M path] [-m path] keyword ...
DESCRIPTION
The man utility displays the manual pages named on the command line. Its
options are as follows:
-a Display all of the man pages for a specified section and name
combination. (Normally, only the first man page found is dis‐
played.)
-C Use the specified file instead of the default configuration file.
This permits users to configure their own man environment. See
man.conf(5) for a description of the contents of this file.
-c Copy the man page to the standard output instead of using more(1)
to paginate it. This is done by default if the standard output
is not a terminal device.
-h Display only the “SYNOPSIS” lines of the requested man pages.
For commands, this is typically the command line usage informa‐
tion. For library functions, this usually contains the required
include files and function prototypes.
-k Display the header lines for any man pages matching keyword(s),
in the same manner as apropos(1).
-M Override the list of standard directories which man searches for
man pages. The supplied path must be a colon (“:”) separated
list of directories. This search path may also be set using the
environment variable MANPATH. The subdirectories to be searched,
and their search order, is specified by the “_subdir” line in the
man configuration file.
-m Augment the list of standard directories which man searches for
man pages. The supplied path must be a colon (“:”) separated
list of directories. These directories will be searched before
the standard directories or the directories specified using the
-M option or the MANPATH environment variable. The subdirecto‐
ries to be searched, and their search order, is specified by the
“_subdir” line in the man configuration file.
-s Restrict the directories that man will search to the specified
section. The man configuration file (see man.conf(5)) specifies
the possible section values that are currently available.
-S Display only man pages that have the specified string in the
directory part of their filenames. This allows the man page
search process criteria to be narrowed without having to change
the MANPATH or “_default” variables.
-w List the pathnames of the man pages which man would display for
the specified section and name combination.
If the ‘-s’ option is not specified, there is more than one argument, the
‘-k’ option is not used, and the first argument is a valid section, then
that argument will be used as if specified by the ‘-s’ option.
If name is given with a full or relative path then man interprets it as a
file specification, so that you can do man ./foo.5 or even man
/cd/foo/bar.1.gz.
ENVIRONMENT
MACHINE As some man pages are intended only for specific architectures,
man searches any subdirectories, with the same name as the cur‐
rent 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 environ‐
ment variable MACHINE to the name of a specific architecture.
MANPATH The standard search path used by man may be overridden by spec‐
ifying a path in the MANPATH environment variable. The format
of the path is a colon (“:”) separated list of directories.
The subdirectories to be searched as well as their search order
is specified by the “_subdir” line in the man configuration
file.
PAGER The pagination command used for writing the output. If the
PAGER environment variable is null or not set, the standard
pagination program more(1) will be used.
FILES
/etc/man.conf default man configuration file.
/usr/{share,X11R6,pkg,local}/man/whatis.db standard whatis/apropos data‐
base search path, set in /etc/man.conf.
SEE ALSOapropos(1), whatis(1), whereis(1), man.conf(5), mdoc(7), mdoc.samples(7)STANDARDSman conforms to X/Open Commands and Utilities Issue 5 (“XCU5”).
BUGS
The on-line man pages are, by necessity, forgiving toward stupid display
devices, causing a few man pages to be not as nicely formatted as their
typeset counterparts.
BSD October 6, 2009 BSD
