MirBSD manpage: man(1)
MAN(1) BSD Reference Manual MAN(1)
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 filesystems
amq (8) - automounter query tool
mount (8) - mount filesystems
mount, unmount (2) - mount or dismount a filesystem
mount_ados (8) - mount an AmigaDOS filesystem
mount_cd9660 (8) - mount an ISO-9660 filesystem
mount_ext2fs (8) - mount a ext2fs filesystem
mount_fdesc (8) - mount the file-descriptor filesystem
mount_ffs, mount_ufs (8) - mount a Berkeley Fast Filesystem
mount_kernfs (8) - mount the /kern filesystem
mount_procfs (8) - mount the process filesystem
mount_xfs (8) - mount the xfs filesystem
mountd (8) - service remote NFS mount requests
newfs, mount_mfs (8) - construct a new filesystem
umount (8) - unmount filesystems
...
-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.
Guidelines for OpenBSD man pages can be found in mdoc(7). A full tutorial
for writing man pages is provided in mdoc.samples(7).
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.
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 for-
mat of the path is a colon (':') separated list of directories.
The subdirectories to be searched, as well as their search ord-
er, are specified by the "_subdir" line in the man configura-
tion 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), mdoc(7),
mdoc.samples(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.
MirBSD #10-current March 9, 1998 2