MAN.CONF(5) BSD Reference Manual MAN.CONF(5)
man.conf - configuration file for man(1)
The man(1), apropos(1), and whatis(1) commands search for manual pages or
their database files as specified by the man.conf file. Manual pages are
normally expected to be preformatted (see nroff(1)) and named with a
trailing '.0'.
The man.conf file contains two types of lines.
The first type of line is a "section" line, which contains a section name
followed by one or more directory paths. The directory paths may contain
the normal shell globbing characters, including curly braces ('{}'); to
escape a shell globbing character, precede it with a backslash ('\').
Lines in this format specify that manual pages for the section may be
found in the following directories.
Directories named with a trailing slash character ('/') are expected to
contain subdirectories of manual pages, (see the keyword "_subdir" below)
instead of manual pages. These subdirectories are searched instead of the
directory.
Before searching any directory for a manual page, the man(1) command al-
ways searches the subdirectory with the same name as the current machine
type, if it exists. No specification of these subdirectories is necessary
in the man.conf file.
Section names are unrestricted except for the reserved words specified
below; in general, you should avoid anything with a leading underscore
('_') to avoid future incompatibilities.
The section named "_default" is the list of directories that will be
searched if no section is specified by the user.
The second type of line is preceded with a "keyword". The possible key-
words and their meanings are as follows:
_build Man file names, regardless of their format, are expected to end
in a '.*' pattern, i.e. a '.' followed by some suffix. The
first field of a _build line lists a suffix which indicates
files which need to be reformatted or manipulated in some way
before being displayed to the user. The suffix may contain the
normal shell globbing characters (NOT including curly braces
('{}')). The rest of the line must be a shell command line, the
standard output of which is the manual page in a format which
may be directly displayed to the user. Any occurrences of the
string '%s' in the shell command line will be replaced by the
name of the file which is being reformatted.
_subdir The list (in search order) of subdirectories which will be
searched in any directory named with a trailing slash ('/')
character. This list is also used when a path is specified to
the man(1) utility by the user, using the MANPATH environment
variable or the -M and -m options.
_suffix Man file names, regardless of their format, are expected to end
in a '.*' pattern, i.e. a '.' followed by some suffix. Each
field of a _suffix line is a suffix which indicates files which
do not need to be reformatted or manipulated in any way, but
which may be directly displayed to the user. Each suffix may
contain the normal shell globbing characters (NOT including
curly braces ('{}')).
_version The version of the configuration file.
_whatdb The full pathname (not just a directory path) for a database to
be used by the apropos(1) and whatis(1) commands.
Multiple specifications for all types of lines are cumulative and the en-
tries are used in the order listed in the file; multiple entries may be
listed per line, as well.
Empty lines or lines whose first non-whitespace character is a hash mark
('#') are ignored.
/etc/man.conf standard manual directory search path
Given the following man.conf file:
_version BSD.2
_subdir cat[123]
_suffix .0
_build .[1-9] nroff -man %s
_build .tbl tbl %s | nroff -man
_default /usr/share/man/
sect3 /usr/share/man/{old/,}cat3
By default, the command "man mktemp" will search for "mktemp.<any_digit>"
and "mktemp.tbl" in the directories /usr/share/man/cat1,
/usr/share/man/cat2, and /usr/share/man/cat3. If on a machine of type
"vax", the subdirectory "vax" in each directory would be searched as
well, before the directory was searched.
If "mktemp.tbl" was found first, the command "tbl mktemp.tbl | nroff -
man" would be run to build a man page for display to the user.
The command "man sect3 mktemp" would search the directories
/usr/share/man/old/cat3 and /usr/share/man/cat3, in that order, for the
mktemp(1) manual page. If a subdirectory with the same name as the
current machine type existed in any of them, it would be searched as
well, before each of them were searched.
apropos(1), machine(1), man(1), whatis(1), whereis(1), fnmatch(3),
glob(3)
MirBSD #10-current January 2, 1994 1