MAN(1) BSD General Commands Manual MAN(1)NAMEman — display the on-line manual pages
SYNOPSISman [-achw] [-C file] [-M path] [-m path] [section] name ...
DESCRIPTION
The man utility displays the BSD manual pages entitled name.
The options are as follows:
-a Display all of the manual pages for a specified section and name
combination. (Normally, only the first manual page found is dis‐
played.)
-C Use the specified file instead of the default configuration file.
This permits users to configure their own manual environment.
See man.conf(5) for a description of the contents of this file.
-c Copy the manual 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 manual pages.
-M Override the list of standard directories which man searches for
manual pages. The supplied path must be a colon (``:'') sepa‐
rated 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
manual pages. The supplied path must be a colon (``:'') sepa‐
rated 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
subdirectories to be searched, and their search order, is speci‐
fied by the ``_subdir'' line in the man configuration file.
-w List the pathnames of the manual pages which man would display
for the specified section and name combination.
The optional section argument restricts the directories that man will
search. The man configuration file (see man.conf(5)) specifies the pos‐
sible section values that are currently available. If only a single
argument is specified or if the first argument is not a valid section,
man assumes that the argument is the name of a manual page to be dis‐
played.
ENVIRONMENT
MACHINE As some manual pages are intended only for specific architec‐
tures, man searches any subdirectories, with the same name as
the current 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 Any value of the environment variable PAGER will be used
instead of the standard pagination program, more(1).
FILES
/etc/man.conf default man configuration file.
SEE ALSOapropos(1), whatis(1), whereis(1), man.conf(5)BUGS
The on-line manual pages are, by necessity, forgiving toward stupid dis‐
play devices, causing a few manual pages to not as nicely formatted as
their typeset counterparts.
HISTORY
A man command appeared in Version 6 AT&T UNIX.
4th Berkeley Distribution January 2, 1994 4th Berkeley Distribution
