NAME

man − find manual information by keywords; print out the manual

SYNOPSIS

man [ − ] [ −p ] [ −t ] [ −M path ] [ section ] title ... 
man −k keyword ... 
man −f file ... 

DESCRIPTION

Man 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 neither −k nor −f is specified, man formats a specified set of manual pages.  If a section specifier is given, man looks in the 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, man formats its output as though you had specified the − option.  See the OPTIONS section below. 

Man looks for the manual page in either of two forms, the nroff source or preformatted pages.  If either version is available, man displays the manual page.  Man displays the preformatted version if it is available and it has a more recent modify time than the nroff source.  Otherwise, man formats the manual page with nroff and displays it.  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. 

OPTIONS

− Pipes man’s output through more(1) with the −s option to crush out useless blank lines and to stop after each page on the screen.  When the output stops, hit a space to continue or a control-D to scroll 11 more lines. 

−f filenames
Attempts to locate manual sections related to those files, printing out the table of contents lines for those sections.

−k keywords
Prints out a one line synopsis of each manual sections whose listing in the table of contents contains one of those keywords.

−M path
Supplies a search path (in the shell) that man will use to look for manual information.  Normally man checks in a standard location for manual information (/usr/man).  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.  When specify a search path with the with the −k and −f options, specify the path first, then the −k or −f flag and arguments. 

−p section
Troffs the specified section to a window.  This option overrides −t.  Man ignores −p if the standard ouput for man is not a window. 

−t Troffs the specified section to a suitable raster output device. 

FILES

/usr/manstandard manual area
/usr/man/man?/∗directories containing source for manuals
/usr/man/cat?/∗directories containing preformatted pages
/usr/man/whatiskeyword database

SEE ALSO

apropos(1), more(1), whereis(1), catman(8)

BUGS

The manual is supposedly reproducible on either a phototypesetter or a typewriter.  However, some information is necessarily lost when the manual is reproduced on a typewriter. 

4th Berkeley Distribution  —  May 9, 1986