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  1. MAN(1) Manual pager utils MAN(1)
  2.  
  3. NAME
  4. man - an interface to the on-line reference manuals
  5.  
  6. SYNOPSIS
  7. man [-C file] [-d] [-D] [--warnings[=warnings]] [-R encoding] [-L
  8. locale] [-m system[,...]] [-M path] [-S list] [-e extension] [-i|-I]
  9. [--regex|--wildcard] [--names-only] [-a] [-u] [--no-subpages] [-P
  10. pager] [-r prompt] [-7] [-E encoding] [--no-hyphenation] [--no-justifi-
  11. cation] [-p string] [-t] [-T[device]] [-H[browser]] [-X[dpi]] [-Z]
  12. [[section] page ...] ...
  13. man -k [apropos options] regexp ...
  14. man -K [-w|-W] [-S list] [-i|-I] [--regex] [section] term ...
  15. man -f [whatis options] page ...
  16. man -l [-C file] [-d] [-D] [--warnings[=warnings]] [-R encoding] [-L
  17. locale] [-P pager] [-r prompt] [-7] [-E encoding] [-p string] [-t]
  18. [-T[device]] [-H[browser]] [-X[dpi]] [-Z] file ...
  19. man -w|-W [-C file] [-d] [-D] page ...
  20. man -c [-C file] [-d] [-D] page ...
  21. man [-?V]
  22.  
  23. DESCRIPTION
  24. man is the system's manual pager. Each page argument given to man is
  25. normally the name of a program, utility or function. The manual page
  26. associated with each of these arguments is then found and displayed. A
  27. section, if provided, will direct man to look only in that section of
  28. the manual. The default action is to search in all of the available
  29. sections following a pre-defined order ("1 n l 8 3 0 2 5 4 9 6 7" by
  30. default, unless overridden by the SECTION directive in
  31. /etc/man_db.conf), and to show only the first page found, even if page
  32. exists in several sections.
  33.  
  34. The table below shows the section numbers of the manual followed by the
  35. types of pages they contain.
  36.  
  37. 1 Executable programs or shell commands
  38. 2 System calls (functions provided by the kernel)
  39. 3 Library calls (functions within program libraries)
  40. 4 Special files (usually found in /dev)
  41. 5 File formats and conventions eg /etc/passwd
  42. 6 Games
  43. 7 Miscellaneous (including macro packages and conventions), e.g.
  44. man(7), groff(7)
  45. 8 System administration commands (usually only for root)
  46. 9 Kernel routines [Non standard]
  47.  
  48. A manual page consists of several sections.
  49.  
  50. Conventional section names include NAME, SYNOPSIS, CONFIGURATION,
  51. DESCRIPTION, OPTIONS, EXIT STATUS, RETURN VALUE, ERRORS, ENVIRONMENT,
  52. FILES, VERSIONS, CONFORMING TO, NOTES, BUGS, EXAMPLE, AUTHORS, and
  53. SEE ALSO.
  54.  
  55. The following conventions apply to the SYNOPSIS section and can be used
  56. as a guide in other sections.
  57.  
  58. bold text type exactly as shown.
  59. italic text replace with appropriate argument.
  60. [-abc] any or all arguments within [ ] are optional.
  61. -a|-b options delimited by | cannot be used together.
  62.  
  63. argument ... argument is repeatable.
  64. [expression] ... entire expression within [ ] is repeatable.
  65.  
  66. Exact rendering may vary depending on the output device. For instance,
  67. man will usually not be able to render italics when running in a termi-
  68. nal, and will typically use underlined or coloured text instead.
  69.  
  70. The command or function illustration is a pattern that should match all
  71. possible invocations. In some cases it is advisable to illustrate sev-
  72. eral exclusive invocations as is shown in the SYNOPSIS section of this
  73. manual page.
  74.  
  75. EXAMPLES
  76. man ls
  77. Display the manual page for the item (program) ls.
  78.  
  79. man -a intro
  80. Display, in succession, all of the available intro manual pages
  81. contained within the manual. It is possible to quit between suc-
  82. cessive displays or skip any of them.
  83.  
  84. man -t alias | lpr -Pps
  85. Format the manual page referenced by `alias', usually a shell man-
  86. ual page, into the default troff or groff format and pipe it to the
  87. printer named ps. The default output for groff is usually Post-
  88. Script. man --help should advise as to which processor is bound to
  89. the -t option.
  90.  
  91. man -l -Tdvi ./foo.1x.gz > ./foo.1x.dvi
  92. This command will decompress and format the nroff source manual
  93. page ./foo.1x.gz into a device independent (dvi) file. The redi-
  94. rection is necessary as the -T flag causes output to be directed to
  95. stdout with no pager. The output could be viewed with a program
  96. such as xdvi or further processed into PostScript using a program
  97. such as dvips.
  98.  
  99. man -k printf
  100. Search the short descriptions and manual page names for the keyword
  101. printf as regular expression. Print out any matches. Equivalent
  102. to apropos printf.
  103.  
  104. man -f smail
  105. Lookup the manual pages referenced by smail and print out the short
  106. descriptions of any found. Equivalent to whatis smail.
  107.  
  108. OVERVIEW
  109. Many options are available to man in order to give as much flexibility
  110. as possible to the user. Changes can be made to the search path, sec-
  111. tion order, output processor, and other behaviours and operations
  112. detailed below.
  113.  
  114. If set, various environment variables are interrogated to determine the
  115. operation of man. It is possible to set the `catch all' variable
  116. $MANOPT to any string in command line format with the exception that
  117. any spaces used as part of an option's argument must be escaped (pre-
  118. ceded by a backslash). man will parse $MANOPT prior to parsing its own
  119. command line. Those options requiring an argument will be overridden
  120. by the same options found on the command line. To reset all of the
  121. options set in $MANOPT, -D can be specified as the initial command line
  122. option. This will allow man to `forget' about the options specified in
  123. $MANOPT although they must still have been valid.
  124.  
  125. The manual pager utilities packaged as man-db make extensive use of
  126. index database caches. These caches contain information such as where
  127. each manual page can be found on the filesystem and what its whatis
  128. (short one line description of the man page) contains, and allow man to
  129. run faster than if it had to search the filesystem each time to find
  130. the appropriate manual page. If requested using the -u option, man
  131. will ensure that the caches remain consistent, which can obviate the
  132. need to manually run software to update traditional whatis text data-
  133. bases.
  134.  
  135. If man cannot find a mandb initiated index database for a particular
  136. manual page hierarchy, it will still search for the requested manual
  137. pages, although file globbing will be necessary to search within that
  138. hierarchy. If whatis or apropos fails to find an index it will try to
  139. extract information from a traditional whatis database instead.
  140.  
  141. These utilities support compressed source nroff files having, by
  142. default, the extensions of .Z, .z and .gz. It is possible to deal with
  143. any compression extension, but this information must be known at com-
  144. pile time. Also, by default, any cat pages produced are compressed
  145. using gzip. Each `global' manual page hierarchy such as /usr/share/man
  146. or /usr/X11R6/man may have any directory as its cat page hierarchy.
  147. Traditionally the cat pages are stored under the same hierarchy as the
  148. man pages, but for reasons such as those specified in the File Hierar-
  149. chy Standard (FHS), it may be better to store them elsewhere. For
  150. details on how to do this, please read manpath(5). For details on why
  151. to do this, read the standard.
  152.  
  153. International support is available with this package. Native language
  154. manual pages are accessible (if available on your system) via use of
  155. locale functions. To activate such support, it is necessary to set
  156. either $LC_MESSAGES, $LANG or another system dependent environment
  157. variable to your language locale, usually specified in the POSIX 1003.1
  158. based format:
  159.  
  160. <language>[_<territory>[.<character-set>[,<version>]]]
  161.  
  162. If the desired page is available in your locale, it will be displayed
  163. in lieu of the standard (usually American English) page.
  164.  
  165. Support for international message catalogues is also featured in this
  166. package and can be activated in the same way, again if available. If
  167. you find that the manual pages and message catalogues supplied with
  168. this package are not available in your native language and you would
  169. like to supply them, please contact the maintainer who will be coordi-
  170. nating such activity.
  171.  
  172. For information regarding other features and extensions available with
  173. this manual pager, please read the documents supplied with the package.
  174.  
  175. DEFAULTS
  176. man will search for the desired manual pages within the index database
  177. caches. If the -u option is given, a cache consistency check is per-
  178. formed to ensure the databases accurately reflect the filesystem. If
  179. this option is always given, it is not generally necessary to run mandb
  180. after the caches are initially created, unless a cache becomes corrupt.
  181. However, the cache consistency check can be slow on systems with many
  182. manual pages installed, so it is not performed by default, and system
  183. administrators may wish to run mandb every week or so to keep the data-
  184. base caches fresh. To forestall problems caused by outdated caches,
  185. man will fall back to file globbing if a cache lookup fails, just as it
  186. would if no cache was present.
  187.  
  188. Once a manual page has been located, a check is performed to find out
  189. if a relative preformatted `cat' file already exists and is newer than
  190. the nroff file. If it does and is, this preformatted file is (usually)
  191. decompressed and then displayed, via use of a pager. The pager can be
  192. specified in a number of ways, or else will fall back to a default is
  193. used (see option -P for details). If no cat is found or is older than
  194. the nroff file, the nroff is filtered through various programs and is
  195. shown immediately.
  196.  
  197. If a cat file can be produced (a relative cat directory exists and has
  198. appropriate permissions), man will compress and store the cat file in
  199. the background.
  200.  
  201. The filters are deciphered by a number of means. Firstly, the command
  202. line option -p or the environment variable $MANROFFSEQ is interrogated.
  203. If -p was not used and the environment variable was not set, the ini-
  204. tial line of the nroff file is parsed for a preprocessor string. To
  205. contain a valid preprocessor string, the first line must resemble
  206.  
  207. '\" <string>
  208.  
  209. where string can be any combination of letters described by option -p
  210. below.
  211.  
  212. If none of the above methods provide any filter information, a default
  213. set is used.
  214.  
  215. A formatting pipeline is formed from the filters and the primary for-
  216. matter (nroff or [tg]roff with -t) and executed. Alternatively, if an
  217. executable program mandb_nfmt (or mandb_tfmt with -t) exists in the man
  218. tree root, it is executed instead. It gets passed the manual source
  219. file, the preprocessor string, and optionally the device specified with
  220. -T or -E as arguments.
  221.  
  222. OPTIONS
  223. Non argument options that are duplicated either on the command line, in
  224. $MANOPT, or both, are not harmful. For options that require an argu-
  225. ment, each duplication will override the previous argument value.
  226.  
  227. General options
  228. -C file, --config-file=file
  229. Use this user configuration file rather than the default of
  230. ~/.manpath.
  231.  
  232. -d, --debug
  233. Print debugging information.
  234.  
  235. -D, --default
  236. This option is normally issued as the very first option and
  237. resets man's behaviour to its default. Its use is to reset
  238. those options that may have been set in $MANOPT. Any options
  239. that follow -D will have their usual effect.
  240.  
  241. --warnings[=warnings]
  242. Enable warnings from groff. This may be used to perform sanity
  243. checks on the source text of manual pages. warnings is a comma-
  244. separated list of warning names; if it is not supplied, the
  245. default is "mac". See the "Warnings" node in info groff for a
  246. list of available warning names.
  247.  
  248. Main modes of operation
  249. -f, --whatis
  250. Equivalent to whatis. Display a short description from the man-
  251. ual page, if available. See whatis(1) for details.
  252.  
  253. -k, --apropos
  254. Equivalent to apropos. Search the short manual page descrip-
  255. tions for keywords and display any matches. See apropos(1) for
  256. details.
  257.  
  258. -K, --global-apropos
  259. Search for text in all manual pages. This is a brute-force
  260. search, and is likely to take some time; if you can, you should
  261. specify a section to reduce the number of pages that need to be
  262. searched. Search terms may be simple strings (the default), or
  263. regular expressions if the --regex option is used.
  264.  
  265. -l, --local-file
  266. Activate `local' mode. Format and display local manual files
  267. instead of searching through the system's manual collection.
  268. Each manual page argument will be interpreted as an nroff source
  269. file in the correct format. No cat file is produced. If '-' is
  270. listed as one of the arguments, input will be taken from stdin.
  271. When this option is not used, and man fails to find the page
  272. required, before displaying the error message, it attempts to
  273. act as if this option was supplied, using the name as a filename
  274. and looking for an exact match.
  275.  
  276. -w, --where, --path, --location
  277. Don't actually display the manual pages, but do print the loca-
  278. tion(s) of the source nroff files that would be formatted.
  279.  
  280. -W, --where-cat, --location-cat
  281. Don't actually display the manual pages, but do print the loca-
  282. tion(s) of the cat files that would be displayed. If -w and -W
  283. are both specified, print both separated by a space.
  284.  
  285. -c, --catman
  286. This option is not for general use and should only be used by
  287. the catman program.
  288.  
  289. -R encoding, --recode=encoding
  290. Instead of formatting the manual page in the usual way, output
  291. its source converted to the specified encoding. If you already
  292. know the encoding of the source file, you can also use man-
  293. conv(1) directly. However, this option allows you to convert
  294. several manual pages to a single encoding without having to
  295. explicitly state the encoding of each, provided that they were
  296. already installed in a structure similar to a manual page hier-
  297. archy.
  298.  
  299. Finding manual pages
  300. -L locale, --locale=locale
  301. man will normally determine your current locale by a call to the
  302. C function setlocale(3) which interrogates various environment
  303. variables, possibly including $LC_MESSAGES and $LANG. To tempo-
  304. rarily override the determined value, use this option to supply
  305. a locale string directly to man. Note that it will not take
  306. effect until the search for pages actually begins. Output such
  307. as the help message will always be displayed in the initially
  308. determined locale.
  309.  
  310. -m system[,...], --systems=system[,...]
  311. If this system has access to other operating system's manual
  312. pages, they can be accessed using this option. To search for a
  313. manual page from NewOS's manual page collection, use the option
  314. -m NewOS.
  315.  
  316. The system specified can be a combination of comma delimited
  317. operating system names. To include a search of the native oper-
  318. ating system's manual pages, include the system name man in the
  319. argument string. This option will override the $SYSTEM environ-
  320. ment variable.
  321.  
  322. -M path, --manpath=path
  323. Specify an alternate manpath to use. By default, man uses man-
  324. path derived code to determine the path to search. This option
  325. overrides the $MANPATH environment variable and causes option -m
  326. to be ignored.
  327.  
  328. A path specified as a manpath must be the root of a manual page
  329. hierarchy structured into sections as described in the man-db
  330. manual (under "The manual page system"). To view manual pages
  331. outside such hierarchies, see the -l option.
  332.  
  333. -S list, -s list, --sections=list
  334. List is a colon- or comma-separated list of `order specific'
  335. manual sections to search. This option overrides the $MANSECT
  336. environment variable. (The -s spelling is for compatibility
  337. with System V.)
  338.  
  339. -e sub-extension, --extension=sub-extension
  340. Some systems incorporate large packages of manual pages, such as
  341. those that accompany the Tcl package, into the main manual page
  342. hierarchy. To get around the problem of having two manual pages
  343. with the same name such as exit(3), the Tcl pages were usually
  344. all assigned to section l. As this is unfortunate, it is now
  345. possible to put the pages in the correct section, and to assign
  346. a specific `extension' to them, in this case, exit(3tcl). Under
  347. normal operation, man will display exit(3) in preference to
  348. exit(3tcl). To negotiate this situation and to avoid having to
  349. know which section the page you require resides in, it is now
  350. possible to give man a sub-extension string indicating which
  351. package the page must belong to. Using the above example, sup-
  352. plying the option -e tcl to man will restrict the search to
  353. pages having an extension of *tcl.
  354.  
  355. -i, --ignore-case
  356. Ignore case when searching for manual pages. This is the
  357. default.
  358.  
  359. -I, --match-case
  360. Search for manual pages case-sensitively.
  361.  
  362. --regex
  363. Show all pages with any part of either their names or their
  364. descriptions matching each page argument as a regular expres-
  365. sion, as with apropos(1). Since there is usually no reasonable
  366. way to pick a "best" page when searching for a regular expres-
  367. sion, this option implies -a.
  368.  
  369. --wildcard
  370. Show all pages with any part of either their names or their
  371. descriptions matching each page argument using shell-style wild-
  372. cards, as with apropos(1) --wildcard. The page argument must
  373. match the entire name or description, or match on word bound-
  374. aries in the description. Since there is usually no reasonable
  375. way to pick a "best" page when searching for a wildcard, this
  376. option implies -a.
  377.  
  378. --names-only
  379. If the --regex or --wildcard option is used, match only page
  380. names, not page descriptions, as with whatis(1). Otherwise, no
  381. effect.
  382.  
  383. -a, --all
  384. By default, man will exit after displaying the most suitable
  385. manual page it finds. Using this option forces man to display
  386. all the manual pages with names that match the search criteria.
  387.  
  388. -u, --update
  389. This option causes man to perform an `inode level' consistency
  390. check on its database caches to ensure that they are an accurate
  391. representation of the filesystem. It will only have a useful
  392. effect if man is installed with the setuid bit set.
  393.  
  394. --no-subpages
  395. By default, man will try to interpret pairs of manual page names
  396. given on the command line as equivalent to a single manual page
  397. name containing a hyphen or an underscore. This supports the
  398. common pattern of programs that implement a number of subcom-
  399. mands, allowing them to provide manual pages for each that can
  400. be accessed using similar syntax as would be used to invoke the
  401. subcommands themselves. For example:
  402.  
  403. $ man -aw git diff
  404. /usr/share/man/man1/git-diff.1.gz
  405.  
  406. To disable this behaviour, use the --no-subpages option.
  407.  
  408. $ man -aw --no-subpages git diff
  409. /usr/share/man/man1/git.1.gz
  410. /usr/share/man/man3/Git.3pm.gz
  411. /usr/share/man/man1/diff.1.gz
  412.  
  413. Controlling formatted output
  414. -P pager, --pager=pager
  415. Specify which output pager to use. By default, man uses less.
  416. This option overrides the $MANPAGER environment variable, which
  417. in turn overrides the $PAGER environment variable. It is not
  418. used in conjunction with -f or -k.
  419.  
  420. The value may be a simple command name or a command with argu-
  421. ments, and may use shell quoting (backslashes, single quotes, or
  422. double quotes). It may not use pipes to connect multiple com-
  423. mands; if you need that, use a wrapper script, which may take
  424. the file to display either as an argument or on standard input.
  425.  
  426. -r prompt, --prompt=prompt
  427. If a recent version of less is used as the pager, man will
  428. attempt to set its prompt and some sensible options. The
  429. default prompt looks like
  430.  
  431. Manual page name(sec) line x
  432.  
  433. where name denotes the manual page name, sec denotes the section
  434. it was found under and x the current line number. This is
  435. achieved by using the $LESS environment variable.
  436.  
  437. Supplying -r with a string will override this default. The
  438. string may contain the text $MAN_PN which will be expanded to
  439. the name of the current manual page and its section name sur-
  440. rounded by `(' and `)'. The string used to produce the default
  441. could be expressed as
  442.  
  443. \ Manual\ page\ \$MAN_PN\ ?ltline\ %lt?L/%L.:
  444. byte\ %bB?s/%s..?\ (END):?pB\ %pB\\%..
  445. (press h for help or q to quit)
  446.  
  447. It is broken into three lines here for the sake of readability
  448. only. For its meaning see the less(1) manual page. The prompt
  449. string is first evaluated by the shell. All double quotes,
  450. back-quotes and backslashes in the prompt must be escaped by a
  451. preceding backslash. The prompt string may end in an escaped $
  452. which may be followed by further options for less. By default
  453. man sets the -ix8 options.
  454.  
  455. The $MANLESS environment variable described below may be used to
  456. set a default prompt string if none is supplied on the command
  457. line.
  458.  
  459. -7, --ascii
  460. When viewing a pure ascii(7) manual page on a 7 bit terminal or
  461. terminal emulator, some characters may not display correctly
  462. when using the latin1(7) device description with GNU nroff.
  463. This option allows pure ascii manual pages to be displayed in
  464. ascii with the latin1 device. It will not translate any latin1
  465. text. The following table shows the translations performed:
  466. some parts of it may only be displayed properly when using GNU
  467. nroff's latin1(7) device.
  468.  
  469. Description Octal latin1 ascii
  470. ----------------------------------------
  471. continuation 255 - -
  472. hyphen
  473. bullet (middle 267 o o
  474. dot)
  475. acute accent 264 ' '
  476. multiplication 327 x x
  477. sign
  478.  
  479. If the latin1 column displays correctly, your terminal may be
  480. set up for latin1 characters and this option is not necessary.
  481. If the latin1 and ascii columns are identical, you are reading
  482. this page using this option or man did not format this page
  483. using the latin1 device description. If the latin1 column is
  484. missing or corrupt, you may need to view manual pages with this
  485. option.
  486.  
  487. This option is ignored when using options -t, -H, -T, or -Z and
  488. may be useless for nroff other than GNU's.
  489.  
  490. -E encoding, --encoding=encoding
  491. Generate output for a character encoding other than the default.
  492. For backward compatibility, encoding may be an nroff device such
  493. as ascii, latin1, or utf8 as well as a true character encoding
  494. such as UTF-8.
  495.  
  496. --no-hyphenation, --nh
  497. Normally, nroff will automatically hyphenate text at line breaks
  498. even in words that do not contain hyphens, if it is necessary to
  499. do so to lay out words on a line without excessive spacing.
  500. This option disables automatic hyphenation, so words will only
  501. be hyphenated if they already contain hyphens.
  502.  
  503. If you are writing a manual page and simply want to prevent
  504. nroff from hyphenating a word at an inappropriate point, do not
  505. use this option, but consult the nroff documentation instead;
  506. for instance, you can put "\%" inside a word to indicate that it
  507. may be hyphenated at that point, or put "\%" at the start of a
  508. word to prevent it from being hyphenated.
  509.  
  510. --no-justification, --nj
  511. Normally, nroff will automatically justify text to both margins.
  512. This option disables full justification, leaving justified only
  513. to the left margin, sometimes called "ragged-right" text.
  514.  
  515. If you are writing a manual page and simply want to prevent
  516. nroff from justifying certain paragraphs, do not use this
  517. option, but consult the nroff documentation instead; for
  518. instance, you can use the ".na", ".nf", ".fi", and ".ad"
  519. requests to temporarily disable adjusting and filling.
  520.  
  521. -p string, --preprocessor=string
  522. Specify the sequence of preprocessors to run before nroff or
  523. troff/groff. Not all installations will have a full set of pre-
  524. processors. Some of the preprocessors and the letters used to
  525. designate them are: eqn (e), grap (g), pic (p), tbl (t), vgrind
  526. (v), refer (r). This option overrides the $MANROFFSEQ environ-
  527. ment variable. zsoelim is always run as the very first pre-
  528. processor.
  529.  
  530. -t, --troff
  531. Use groff -mandoc to format the manual page to stdout. This
  532. option is not required in conjunction with -H, -T, or -Z.
  533.  
  534. -T[device], --troff-device[=device]
  535. This option is used to change groff (or possibly troff's) output
  536. to be suitable for a device other than the default. It implies
  537. -t. Examples (provided with Groff-1.17) include dvi, latin1,
  538. ps, utf8, X75 and X100.
  539.  
  540. -H[browser], --html[=browser]
  541. This option will cause groff to produce HTML output, and will
  542. display that output in a web browser. The choice of browser is
  543. determined by the optional browser argument if one is provided,
  544. by the $BROWSER environment variable, or by a compile-time
  545. default if that is unset (usually lynx). This option implies
  546. -t, and will only work with GNU troff.
  547.  
  548. -X[dpi], --gxditview[=dpi]
  549. This option displays the output of groff in a graphical window
  550. using the gxditview program. The dpi (dots per inch) may be 75,
  551. 75-12, 100, or 100-12, defaulting to 75; the -12 variants use a
  552. 12-point base font. This option implies -T with the X75,
  553. X75-12, X100, or X100-12 device respectively.
  554.  
  555. -Z, --ditroff
  556. groff will run troff and then use an appropriate post-processor
  557. to produce output suitable for the chosen device. If groff
  558. -mandoc is groff, this option is passed to groff and will sup-
  559. press the use of a post-processor. It implies -t.
  560.  
  561. Getting help
  562. -?, --help
  563. Print a help message and exit.
  564.  
  565. --usage
  566. Print a short usage message and exit.
  567.  
  568. -V, --version
  569. Display version information.
  570.  
  571. EXIT STATUS
  572. 0 Successful program execution.
  573.  
  574. 1 Usage, syntax or configuration file error.
  575.  
  576. 2 Operational error.
  577.  
  578. 3 A child process returned a non-zero exit status.
  579.  
  580. 16 At least one of the pages/files/keywords didn't exist or wasn't
  581. matched.
  582.  
  583. ENVIRONMENT
  584. MANPATH
  585. If $MANPATH is set, its value is used as the path to search for
  586. manual pages.
  587.  
  588. MANROFFOPT
  589. The contents of $MANROFFOPT are added to the command line every
  590. time man invokes the formatter (nroff, troff, or groff).
  591.  
  592. MANROFFSEQ
  593. If $MANROFFSEQ is set, its value is used to determine the set of
  594. preprocessors to pass each manual page through. The default
  595. preprocessor list is system dependent.
  596.  
  597. MANSECT
  598. If $MANSECT is set, its value is a colon-delimited list of sec-
  599. tions and it is used to determine which manual sections to
  600. search and in what order. The default is "1 n l 8 3 0 2 5 4 9 6
  601. 7", unless overridden by the SECTION directive in
  602. /etc/man_db.conf.
  603.  
  604. MANPAGER, PAGER
  605. If $MANPAGER or $PAGER is set ($MANPAGER is used in preference),
  606. its value is used as the name of the program used to display the
  607. manual page. By default, less is used.
  608.  
  609. The value may be a simple command name or a command with argu-
  610. ments, and may use shell quoting (backslashes, single quotes, or
  611. double quotes). It may not use pipes to connect multiple com-
  612. mands; if you need that, use a wrapper script, which may take
  613. the file to display either as an argument or on standard input.
  614.  
  615. MANLESS
  616. If $MANLESS is set, its value will be used as the default prompt
  617. string for the less pager, as if it had been passed using the -r
  618. option (so any occurrences of the text $MAN_PN will be expanded
  619. in the same way). For example, if you want to set the prompt
  620. string unconditionally to "my prompt string", set $MANLESS to
  621. `-Psmy prompt string'. Using the -r option overrides this envi-
  622. ronment variable.
  623.  
  624. BROWSER
  625. If $BROWSER is set, its value is a colon-delimited list of com-
  626. mands, each of which in turn is used to try to start a web
  627. browser for man --html. In each command, %s is replaced by a
  628. filename containing the HTML output from groff, %% is replaced
  629. by a single percent sign (%), and %c is replaced by a colon (:).
  630.  
  631. SYSTEM If $SYSTEM is set, it will have the same effect as if it had
  632. been specified as the argument to the -m option.
  633.  
  634. MANOPT If $MANOPT is set, it will be parsed prior to man's command line
  635. and is expected to be in a similar format. As all of the other
  636. man specific environment variables can be expressed as command
  637. line options, and are thus candidates for being included in
  638. $MANOPT it is expected that they will become obsolete. N.B.
  639. All spaces that should be interpreted as part of an option's
  640. argument must be escaped.
  641.  
  642. MANWIDTH
  643. If $MANWIDTH is set, its value is used as the line length for
  644. which manual pages should be formatted. If it is not set, man-
  645. ual pages will be formatted with a line length appropriate to
  646. the current terminal (using the value of $COLUMNS, an ioctl(2)
  647. if available, or falling back to 80 characters if neither is
  648. available). Cat pages will only be saved when the default for-
  649. matting can be used, that is when the terminal line length is
  650. between 66 and 80 characters.
  651.  
  652. MAN_KEEP_FORMATTING
  653. Normally, when output is not being directed to a terminal (such
  654. as to a file or a pipe), formatting characters are discarded to
  655. make it easier to read the result without special tools. How-
  656. ever, if $MAN_KEEP_FORMATTING is set to any non-empty value,
  657. these formatting characters are retained. This may be useful
  658. for wrappers around man that can interpret formatting charac-
  659. ters.
  660.  
  661. MAN_KEEP_STDERR
  662. Normally, when output is being directed to a terminal (usually
  663. to a pager), any error output from the command used to produce
  664. formatted versions of manual pages is discarded to avoid inter-
  665. fering with the pager's display. Programs such as groff often
  666. produce relatively minor error messages about typographical
  667. problems such as poor alignment, which are unsightly and gener-
  668. ally confusing when displayed along with the manual page. How-
  669. ever, some users want to see them anyway, so, if
  670. $MAN_KEEP_STDERR is set to any non-empty value, error output
  671. will be displayed as usual.
  672.  
  673. LANG, LC_MESSAGES
  674. Depending on system and implementation, either or both of $LANG
  675. and $LC_MESSAGES will be interrogated for the current message
  676. locale. man will display its messages in that locale (if avail-
  677. able). See setlocale(3) for precise details.
  678.  
  679. FILES
  680. /etc/man_db.conf
  681. man-db configuration file.
  682.  
  683. /usr/share/man
  684. A global manual page hierarchy.
  685.  
  686. /usr/share/man/index.(bt|db|dir|pag)
  687. A traditional global index database cache.
  688.  
  689. /var/cache/man/index.(bt|db|dir|pag)
  690. An FHS compliant global index database cache.
  691.  
  692. SEE ALSO
  693. apropos(1), groff(1), less(1), manpath(1), nroff(1), troff(1),
  694. whatis(1), zsoelim(1), setlocale(3), manpath(5), ascii(7), latin1(7),
  695. man(7), catman(8), mandb(8), the man-db package manual, FSSTND
  696.  
  697. HISTORY
  698. 1990, 1991 - Originally written by John W. Eaton (jwe@che.utexas.edu).
  699.  
  700. Dec 23 1992: Rik Faith (faith@cs.unc.edu) applied bug fixes supplied by
  701. Willem Kasdorp (wkasdo@nikhefk.nikef.nl).
  702.  
  703. 30th April 1994 - 23rd February 2000: Wilf. (G.Wilford@ee.surrey.ac.uk)
  704. has been developing and maintaining this package with the help of a few
  705. dedicated people.
  706.  
  707. 30th October 1996 - 30th March 2001: Fabrizio Polacco <fpo-
  708. lacco@debian.org> maintained and enhanced this package for the Debian
  709. project, with the help of all the community.
  710.  
  711. 31st March 2001 - present day: Colin Watson <cjwatson@debian.org> is
  712. now developing and maintaining man-db.
  713.  
  714. 2.7.4 2015-10-08 MAN(1)
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