path: root/usr.bin/man/man.1

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.\"     @(#)man.1	8.2 (Berkeley) 1/2/94
.\"
.Dd January 2, 1994
.Dt MAN 1
.Os BSD 4
.Sh NAME
.Nm man
.Nd display the on-line manual pages
.Sh SYNOPSIS
.Nm man
.Op Fl achw
.Op Fl C Ar file
.Op Fl M Ar path
.Op Fl m Ar path
.Op Ar section
.Ar name Ar ...
.Sh DESCRIPTION
The
.Nm man
utility
displays the
.Bx
manual pages entitled
.Ar name .
.Pp
The options are as follows:
.Bl -tag -width indent
.It Fl a
Display all of the manual pages for a specified
.Ar section
and
.Ar name
combination.
(Normally, only the first manual page found is displayed.)
.It Fl C
Use the specified 
.Ar file
instead of the default configuration file.
This permits users to configure their own manual environment.
See
.Xr man.conf 5
for a description of the contents of this file.
.It Fl c
Copy the manual page to the standard output instead of using
.Xr more 1
to paginate it.
This is done by default if the standard output is not a terminal device.
.It Fl h
Display only the
.Dq Tn SYNOPSIS
lines of the requested manual pages.
.It Fl M
Override the list of standard directories which
.Nm man
searches for manual pages.
The supplied
.Ar path
must be a colon (``:'') separated list of directories.
This search path may also be set using the environment variable
.Ev MANPATH .
The subdirectories to be searched, and their search order,
is specified by the ``_subdir'' line in the
.Nm man
configuration file.
.It Fl m
Augment the list of standard directories which
.Nm man
searches for manual pages.
The supplied
.Ar path
must be a colon (``:'') separated list of directories.
These directories will be searched before the standard directories or
the directories specified using the
.Fl M
option or the
.Ev MANPATH
environment variable.
The subdirectories to be searched, and their search order,
is specified by the ``_subdir'' line in the
.Nm man
configuration file.
.It Fl w
List the pathnames of the manual pages which
.Nm man
would display for the specified
.Ar section
and
.Ar name
combination.
.El
.Pp
The optional
.Ar section
argument restricts the directories that
.Nm man
will search.
The
.Nm man
configuration file (see
.Xr man.conf 5 )
specifies the possible
.Ar section
values that are currently available.
If only a single argument is specified or if the first argument is
not a valid section,
.Nm man
assumes that the argument is the name of a manual page to be displayed.
.Sh ENVIRONMENT
.Bl -tag -width MANPATHX
.It Ev MACHINE
As some manual pages are intended only for specific architectures,
.Nm 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
.Ev MACHINE
to the name of a specific architecture.
.It Ev MANPATH
The standard search path used by
.Nm man
may be overridden by specifying a path in the
.Ev 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
.Nm man
configuration file.
.It Ev PAGER
Any value of the environment variable
.Ev PAGER
will be used instead of the standard pagination program,
.Xr more 1 .
.El
.Sh FILES
.Bl -tag -width /etc/man.conf -compact
.It Pa /etc/man.conf
default man configuration file.
.El
.Sh SEE ALSO
.Xr apropos 1 ,
.Xr whatis 1 ,
.Xr whereis 1 ,
.Xr man.conf 5
.Sh BUGS
The on-line manual pages are, by necessity, forgiving toward stupid
display devices, causing a few manual pages to not as nicely formatted
as their typeset counterparts.
.Sh HISTORY
A
.Nm
command appeared in
.At v6 .