MAN(1)MAN(1)NAMEman - find manual information by keywords; print out the manual
SYNOPSISman [ - ] [ -M path ] [ section ] title ...
man-t title ...
man-k keyword ...
man-f file ...
DESCRIPTION
Man is a program which gives information from the programmers manual.
It can be asked for one line descriptions of commands specified by
name, or for all commands whose description contains any of a set of
keywords. It can also provide on-line access to the sections of the
printed manual.
When given the option -t and the title of a manual page, man prints the
specified man page on the default printer. The default troff command
used with the -t option is ptroff, which formats the output for
printing on a PostScript printer. A different formatter can be
specified with the `TROFF' environment variable.
When given the option -k and a set of keywords, man prints out a one
line synopsis of each manual sections whose listing in the table of
contents contains one of those keywords.
When given the option -f and a list of file names, man attempts to
locate manual sections related to those files, printing out the table
of contents lines for those sections.
If none of these options is specified, man formats a specified set of
manual pages. If a section specifier is given, man looks in that
section of the manual for the given titles. Section is either an
Arabic section number (3 for instance), or one of the words ``new,''
``local,'' ``old,'' or ``public.'' A section number may be followed by
a single letter classifier (for instance, 1g, indicating a graphics
program in section 1). If section is omitted, man searches all
sections of the manual, giving preference to commands over subroutines
in system libraries, and printing the first section it finds, if any.
If the standard output is a teletype, or if the flag - is given, man
pipes its output through more(1) with the option -s to crush out
useless blank lines and to stop after each page on the screen. Hit a
space to continue, a control-D to scroll 11 more lines when the output
stops. A different pager for viewing man pages (for example, the
less(1) pager) can be specified with the `MANPAGER' environment
variable.
Normally man checks in a standard location for manual information
(/usr/man). This can be changed by supplying a search path with the -M
flag. The search path is a colon (`:') separated list of directories
in which manual subdirectories may be found; e.g.
``/usr/local:/usr/man''. If the environment variable `MANPATH' is set,
its value is used for the default path. If a search path is supplied
with the -k or -f options, it must be specified first.
Man will look for the manual page in either of two forms, the nroff
source or preformatted pages. If either version is available, the
manual page will be displayed. If the preformatted version is
available, and it has a more recent modify time than the nroff source,
it will be promptly displayed. Otherwise, the manual page will be
formatted with nroff and displayed. If the user has permission, the
formatted manual page will be deposited in the proper place, so that
later invocations of man will not need to format the page again.
FILES
/usr/man standard manual area
/usr/man/man?/* directories containing source for manuals
/usr/man/cat?/* directories containing preformatted pages
/usr/man/whatis keyword database
SEE ALSOapropos(1), more(1), whereis(1), catman(8)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 February 13, 1989 MAN(1)
