LINUX CLASSES - BASICS

The man Command

 man - format and display the on-line manual pages
 manpath - determine user's search path for man pages

SYNOPSIS

 man [-acdfFhkKtwW] [-m system] [-p string] [-C conュ
 fig_file] [-M path] [-P pager] [-S section_list] [section]
 name ...

DESCRIPTION

 man formats and displays the on-line manual pages. This
 version knows about the MANPATH and (MAN)PAGER environment
 variables, so you can have your own set(s) of personal man
 pages and choose whatever program you like to display the
 formatted pages. If section is specified, man only looks
 in that section of the manual. You may also specify the
 order to search the sections for entries and which preproュ
 cessors to run on the source files via command line
 options or environment variables. If name contains a /
 then it is first tried as a filename, so that you can do
 man ./foo.5 or even man /cd/foo/bar.1.gz.

OPTIONS

 -C config_file
 Specify the man.conf file to use; the default is
 /etc/man.config. (See man.conf(5).)
 -M path
 Specify the list of directories to search for man
 pages. If no such option is given, the environment
 variable MANPATH is used. If no such environment
 variable is found, the default list is found by
 consulting /etc/man.config. An empty substring of
 MANPATH denotes the default list.
 -P pager
 Specify which pager to use. This option overrides
 the MANPAGER environment variable, which in turn
 overrides the PAGER variable. By default, man uses
 /usr/bin/less-is.
 -S section_list
 List is a colon separated list of manual sections
 to search. This option overrides the MANSECT enviュ
 ronment variable.
 -a By default, man will exit after displaying the
 first manual page it finds. Using this option
 forces man to display all the manual pages that
 match name, not just the first.
 -c Reformat the source man page, even when an up-to-
 date cat page exists. This can be meaningful if
 page is corrupted.
 -d Don't actually display the man pages, but do print
 gobs of debugging information.
 -D Both display and print debugging info.
 -f Equivalent to whatis.
 -F or --preformat
 Format only - do not display.
 -h Print a one-line help message and exit.
 -k Equivalent to apropos.
 -K Search for the specified string in *all* man pages.
 Warning: this is probably very slow! It helps to
 specify a section. (Just to give a rough idea, on
 my machine this takes about a minute per 500 man
 pages.)
 -m system
 Specify an alternate set of man pages to search
 based on the system name given.
 -p string
 Specify the sequence of preprocessors to run before
 nroff or troff. Not all installations will have a
 full set of preprocessors. Some of the preprocesュ
 sors 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.
 -t Use /usr/bin/groff -Tps -mandoc to format the manュ
 ual page, passing the output to stdout. The output
 from /usr/bin/groff -Tps -mandoc may need to be
 passed through some filter or another before being
 printed.
 -w or --path
 Don't actually display the man pages, but do print
 the location(s) of the files that would be formatュ
 ted or displayed. If no argument is given: display
 (on stdout) the list of directories that is
 searched by man for man pages. If manpath is a link
 to man, then "manpath" is equivalent to "man
 --path".
 -W Like -w, but print file names one per line, without
 additional information. This is useful in shell
 Man will try to save the formatted man pages, in order to
 save formatting time the next time these pages are needed.
 Traditionally, formatted versions of pages in DIR/manX are
 saved in DIR/catX, but other mappings from man dir to cat
 dir can be specified in /etc/man.config. No cat pages are
 saved when the required cat directory does not exist.
 It is possible to make man suid to a user man. Then, if a
 cat directory has owner man and mode 0755 (only writable
 by man), and the cat files have owner man and mode 0644 or
 0444 (only writable by man, or not writable at all), no
 ordinary user can change the cat pages or put other files
 in the cat directory. If man is not made suid, then a cat
 directory should have mode 0777 if all users should be
 able to leave cat pages there.
 The option -c forces reformatting a page, even if a recent
 cat page exists.

ENVIRONMENT

 MANPATH
 If MANPATH is set, its value is used as the path to
 search for manual pages.
 MANPL If MANPL is set, its value is used as the display
 page length. Otherwise, the entire man page will
 occupy one (long) page.
 MANROFFSEQ
 If MANROFFSEQ is set, its value is used to deterュ
 mine the set of preprocessors run before running
 nroff or troff. By default, pages are passed
 through the table preprocessor before nroff.
 MANSECT
 If MANSECT is set, its value is used to determine
 which manual sections to search.
 MANWIDTH
 If MANWIDTH is set, its value is used as the width
 manpages should be displayed. Otherwise the pages
 may be displayed over the whole width of your
 screen.
 MANPAGER
 If MANPAGER is set, its value is used as the name
 of the program to use to display the man page. If
 not, then PAGER is used. If that has no value
 either, /usr/bin/less -is is used.
 Thus, the command `LANG=dk man 1 foo' will cause
 man to look for the foo man page in
 .../dk/man1/foo.1, and if it cannot find such a
 file, then in .../man1/foo.1, where ... is a direcュ
 tory on the search path.
 NLSPATH, LC_MESSAGES, LANG
 The environment variables NLSPATH and LC_MESSAGES
 (or LANG when the latter does not exist) play a
 role in locating the message catalog. (But the
 English messages are compiled in, and for English
 no catalog is required.) Note that programs like
 col(1) called by man also use e.g. LC_CTYPE.
 PATH PATH is used in the construction of the default
 search path for man pages.
 SYSTEM SYSTEM is used to get the default alternate system
 name (for use with the -m option).

SEE ALSO

 apropos(1) , whatis(1) , less(1) , groff(1) .

BUGS

 The -t option only works if a troff-like program is
 installed.
 If you see blinking 255円 or <AD> instead of hyphens, put
 `LESSCHARSET=latin1' in your environment.

TIPS

 If you add the line
 (global-set-key [(f1)] (lambda () (interactive) (manual-
 entry (current-word))))
 to your .emacs file, then hitting F1 will give you the man
 page for the library call at the current cursor position.
 To get a plain text version of a man page, without
 backspaces and underscores, try
 # man foo | col -b > foo.mantxt