man is the system's manual pager. Each page argument given to man is normally the name of a program,
utility or function. The manual page associated with each of these arguments is then found and
displayed. A section, if provided, will direct man to look only in that section of the manual. The
default action is to search in all of the available sections, following a pre-defined order and to show
only the first page found, even if page exists in several sections.
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General options
-C file, --config-file=file
Use this user configuration file rather than the default of ~/.manpath.
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-d, --debug
Print debugging information.
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-D, --default
This option is normally issued as the very first option and resets man's behaviour to its default.
Its use is to reset those options that may have been set in $MANOPT. Any options that follow -D
will have their usual effect.
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--warnings[=warnings]
Enable warnings from groff. This may be used to perform sanity checks on the source text of
manual pages. warnings is a comma-separated list of warning names; if it is not supplied, the
default is "mac". See the “Warnings” node in info groff for a list of available warning names.
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Main modes of operation
-f, --whatis
Equivalent to whatis. Display a short description from the manual page, if available. See
whatis(1) for details.
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-k, --apropos
Equivalent to apropos. Search the short manual page descriptions for keywords and display any
matches. See apropos(1) for details.
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-K, --global-apropos
Search for text in all manual pages. This is a brute-force search, and is likely to take some
time; if you can, you should specify a section to reduce the number of pages that need to be
searched. Search terms may be simple strings (the default), or regular expressions if the --regex
option is used.
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-l, --local-file
Activate `local' mode. Format and display local manual files instead of searching through the
system's manual collection. Each manual page argument will be interpreted as an nroff source file
in the correct format. No cat file is produced. If '-' is listed as one of the arguments, input
will be taken from stdin. When this option is not used, and man fails to find the page required,
before displaying the error message, it attempts to act as if this option was supplied, using the
name as a filename and looking for an exact match.
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-w, --where, --location
Don't actually display the manual pages, but do print the location(s) of the source nroff files
that would be formatted.
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-W, --where-cat, --location-cat
Don't actually display the manual pages, but do print the location(s) of the cat files that would
be displayed. If -w and -W are both specified, print both separated by a space.
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-c, --catman
This option is not for general use and should only be used by the catman program.
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-R encoding, --recode=encoding
Instead of formatting the manual page in the usual way, output its source converted to the
specified encoding. If you already know the encoding of the source file, you can also use
manconv(1) directly. However, this option allows you to convert several manual pages to a single
encoding without having to explicitly state the encoding of each, provided that they were already
installed in a structure similar to a manual page hierarchy.
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Finding manual pages
-L locale, --locale=locale
man will normally determine your current locale by a call to the C function setlocale(3) which
interrogates various environment variables, possibly including $LC_MESSAGES and $LANG. To
temporarily override the determined value, use this option to supply a locale string directly to
man. Note that it will not take effect until the search for pages actually begins. Output such
as the help message will always be displayed in the initially determined locale.
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-m system[,...], --systems=system[,...]
If this system has access to other operating system's manual pages, they can be accessed using
this option. To search for a manual page from NewOS's manual page collection, use the option -m
NewOS.
The system specified can be a combination of comma delimited operating system names. To include a
search of the native operating system's manual pages, include the system name man in the argument
string. This option will override the $SYSTEM environment variable.
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-M path, --manpath=path
Specify an alternate manpath to use. By default, man uses manpath derived code to determine the
path to search. This option overrides the $MANPATH environment variable and causes option -m to
be ignored.
A path specified as a manpath must be the root of a manual page hierarchy structured into sections
as described in the man-db manual (under "The manual page system"). To view manual pages outside
such hierarchies, see the -l option.
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-S list, -s list, --sections=list
List is a colon- or comma-separated list of `order specific' manual sections to search. This
option overrides the $MANSECT environment variable. (The -s spelling is for compatibility with
System V.)
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-e sub-extension, --extension=sub-extension
Some systems incorporate large packages of manual pages, such as those that accompany the Tcl
package, into the main manual page hierarchy. To get around the problem of having two manual
pages with the same name such as exit(3), the Tcl pages were usually all assigned to section l.
As this is unfortunate, it is now possible to put the pages in the correct section, and to assign
a specific `extension' to them, in this case, exit(3tcl). Under normal operation, man will
display exit(3) in preference to exit(3tcl). To negotiate this situation and to avoid having to
know which section the page you require resides in, it is now possible to give man a sub-extension
string indicating which package the page must belong to. Using the above example, supplying the
option -e tcl to man will restrict the search to pages having an extension of *tcl.
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-i, --ignore-case
Ignore case when searching for manual pages. This is the default.
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-I, --match-case
Search for manual pages case-sensitively.
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--regex
Show all pages with any part of either their names or their descriptions matching each page
argument as a regular expression, as with apropos(1). Since there is usually no reasonable way to
pick a "best" page when searching for a regular expression, this option implies -a.
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--wildcard
Show all pages with any part of either their names or their descriptions matching each page
argument using shell-style wildcards, as with apropos(1) --wildcard. The page argument must match
the entire name or description, or match on word boundaries in the description. Since there is
usually no reasonable way to pick a "best" page when searching for a wildcard, this option implies
-a.
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--names-only
If the --regex or --wildcard option is used, match only page names, not page descriptions, as with
whatis(1). Otherwise, no effect.
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-a, --all
By default, man will exit after displaying the most suitable manual page it finds. Using this
option forces man to display all the manual pages with names that match the search criteria.
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-u, --update
This option causes man to perform an `inode level' consistency check on its database caches to
ensure that they are an accurate representation of the filesystem. It will only have a useful
effect if man is installed with the setuid bit set.
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--no-subpages
By default, man will try to interpret pairs of manual page names given on the command line as
equivalent to a single manual page name containing a hyphen or an underscore. This supports the
common pattern of programs that implement a number of subcommands, allowing them to provide manual
pages for each that can be accessed using similar syntax as would be used to invoke the
subcommands themselves. For example:
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Controlling formatted output
-P pager, --pager=pager
Specify which output pager to use. By default, man uses pager -s. This option overrides the
$MANPAGER environment variable, which in turn overrides the $PAGER environment variable. It is
not used in conjunction with -f or -k.
The value may be a simple command name or a command with arguments, and may use shell quoting
(backslashes, single quotes, or double quotes). It may not use pipes to connect multiple
commands; if you need that, use a wrapper script, which may take the file to display either as an
argument or on standard input.
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-r prompt, --prompt=prompt
If a recent version of less is used as the pager, man will attempt to set its prompt and some
sensible options. The default prompt looks like
Manual page name(sec) line x
where name denotes the manual page name, sec denotes the section it was found under and x the
current line number. This is achieved by using the $LESS environment variable.
Supplying -r with a string will override this default. The string may contain the text $MAN_PN
which will be expanded to the name of the current manual page and its section name surrounded by
`(' and `)'. The string used to produce the default could be expressed as
byte\ %bB?s/%s..?\ (END):?pB\ %pB\\%..
(press h for help or q to quit)
It is broken into three lines here for the sake of readability only. For its meaning see the
less(1) manual page. The prompt string is first evaluated by the shell. All double quotes, back-
quotes and backslashes in the prompt must be escaped by a preceding backslash. The prompt string
may end in an escaped $ which may be followed by further options for less. By default man sets
the -ix8 options.
If you want to override man's prompt string processing completely, use the $MANLESS environment
variable described below.
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-7, --ascii
When viewing a pure ascii(7) manual page on a 7 bit terminal or terminal emulator, some characters
may not display correctly when using the latin1(7) device description with GNU nroff. This option
allows pure ascii manual pages to be displayed in ascii with the latin1 device. It will not
translate any latin1 text. The following table shows the translations performed: some parts of it
may only be displayed properly when using GNU nroff's latin1(7) device.
Description Octal latin1 ascii
─────────────────────────────────────────────
continuation hyphen 255 ‐ -
bullet (middle dot) 267 o
acute accent 264 ´ '
multiplication sign 327 × x
If the latin1 column displays correctly, your terminal may be set up for latin1 characters and
this option is not necessary. If the latin1 and ascii columns are identical, you are reading this
page using this option or man did not format this page using the latin1 device description. If
the latin1 column is missing or corrupt, you may need to view manual pages with this option.
This option is ignored when using options -t, -H, -T, or -Z and may be useless for nroff other
than GNU's.
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-E encoding, --encoding=encoding
Generate output for a character encoding other than the default. For backward compatibility,
encoding may be an nroff device such as ascii, latin1, or utf8 as well as a true character
encoding such as UTF-8.
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--no-hyphenation, --nh
Normally, nroff will automatically hyphenate text at line breaks even in words that do not contain
hyphens, if it is necessary to do so to lay out words on a line without excessive spacing. This
option disables automatic hyphenation, so words will only be hyphenated if they already contain
hyphens.
If you are writing a manual page and simply want to prevent nroff from hyphenating a word at an
inappropriate point, do not use this option, but consult the nroff documentation instead; for
instance, you can put "\%" inside a word to indicate that it may be hyphenated at that point, or
put "\%" at the start of a word to prevent it from being hyphenated.
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--no-justification, --nj
Normally, nroff will automatically justify text to both margins. This option disables full
justification, leaving justified only to the left margin, sometimes called "ragged-right" text.
If you are writing a manual page and simply want to prevent nroff from justifying certain
paragraphs, do not use this option, but consult the nroff documentation instead; for instance, you
can use the ".na", ".nf", ".fi", and ".ad" requests to temporarily disable adjusting and filling.
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-p string, --preprocessor=string
Specify the sequence of preprocessors to run before nroff or troff/groff. Not all installations
will have a full set of preprocessors. Some of the preprocessors and the letters used to
designate them are: eqn (e), grap (g), pic (p), tbl (t), vgrind (v), refer (r). This option
overrides the $MANROFFSEQ environment variable. zsoelim is always run as the very first
preprocessor.
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-t, --troff
Use groff -mandoc to format the manual page to stdout. This option is not required in conjunction
with -H, -T, or -Z.
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-T[device], --troff-device[=device]
This option is used to change groff (or possibly troff's) output to be suitable for a device other
than the default. It implies -t. Examples (provided with Groff-1.17) include dvi, latin1, ps,
utf8, X75 and X100.
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-H[browser], --html[=browser]
This option will cause groff to produce HTML output, and will display that output in a web
browser. The choice of browser is determined by the optional browser argument if one is provided,
by the $BROWSER environment variable, or by a compile-time default if that is unset (usually
lynx). This option implies -t, and will only work with GNU troff.
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-X[dpi], --gxditview[=dpi]
This option displays the output of groff in a graphical window using the gxditview program. The
dpi (dots per inch) may be 75, 75-12, 100, or 100-12, defaulting to 75; the -12 variants use a
12-point base font. This option implies -T with the X75, X75-12, X100, or X100-12 device
respectively.
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-Z, --ditroff
groff will run troff and then use an appropriate post-processor to produce output suitable for the
chosen device. If groff -mandoc is groff, this option is passed to groff and will suppress the
use of a post-processor. It implies -t.
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Getting help
-h, --help
Print a help message and exit.
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-V, --version
Display version information.
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