man - display the on-line manual pages
man [-achw] [-C file] [-M path] [-m path] [-S subsection]
[-s section]
[section] name [...]
man -f command
man -k keyword
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 displayed.)
-C file
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.
-f command
Locate man pages matching the command in much the
same way
whatis(1) works.
-h Display only the ``SYNOPSIS'' lines of the requested
manual
pages.
-k keyword
Locate man pages matching keyword in much the same
way as
apropos(1) works (in fact, it runs apropos(1)).
This can be used
to find which man page applies to a particular subsystem you are
interested in. For instance:
$ man -k mount
will list all man pages which contain keyword in the
``NAME''
line of the man page; in this case a list much like
this:
amd (8) - automatically mount file systems
amq (8) - automounter query tool
mount (8) - mount file systems
mount, unmount (2) - mount or dismount a filesystem
mount_ados (8) - mount an AmigaDOS file system
mount_cd9660 (8) - mount an ISO-9660 filesystem
mount_ext2fs (8) - mount a ext2fs file system
mount_fdesc (8) - mount the file-descriptor file
system
mount_ffs, mount_ufs (8) - mount a Berkeley Fast
File System
mount_kernfs (8) - mount the /kern file system
mount_procfs (8) - mount the process file system
mount_umap (8) - sample file system layer
mount_union (8) - mount union filesystems
mount_xfs (8) - mount the xfs filesystem
mountd (8) - service remote NFS mount requests
newfs, mount_mfs (8) - construct a new file system
umount (8) - unmount file systems
...
-M path
Override the list of standard directories which man
searches for
manual 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, are specified by the ``_subdir'' line in
the man configuration file.
-m path
Augment the list of standard directories which man
searches for
manual 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
subdirectories
to be searched, and their search order, are
specified by the
``_subdir'' line in the man configuration file.
-S subsection
Specifies the machine-dependent subsection. This
overrides the
MACHINE environment variable. See the ENVIRONMENT
section below.
-s section
Another way of specifying the section, for compatibility with man
on other operating systems.
-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 currently available sections are:
1 General commands (tools and utilities).
2 System calls and error numbers.
3 Libraries.
3p perl(1) programmer's reference guide.
4 Device drivers.
5 File formats.
6 Games.
7 Miscellaneous.
8 System maintenance and operation commands.
9 Kernel internals.
The man configuration file (see man.conf(5)) specifies the
possible
section values, and their search order. 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 displayed.
MACHINE As some manual pages are intended only for specific architectures,
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 environment
variable MACHINE to the name of a specific
architecture.
MANPAGER Any non-null value of the environment variable
MANPAGER will be
used instead of the standard pagination program,
more(1).
MANPATH The standard search path used by man may be overridden by specifying
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,
are specified by the ``_subdir'' line in the
man configuration
file.
PAGER Specifies the pagination program to use when MANPAGER is not
defined.
/etc/man.conf default man configuration file
apropos(1), intro(1), whatis(1), whereis(1), intro(2), intro(3),
intro(4), intro(5), man.conf(5), intro(6), intro(7), intro(8), intro(9)
A man command appeared in Version 3 AT&T UNIX.
The on-line manual pages are, by necessity, forgiving toward
stupid display
devices, causing a few manual pages to be not as nicely
formatted as
their typeset counterparts.
OpenBSD 3.6 March 9, 1998
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