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MAN(1)			      Manual pager utils			MAN(1)

NAME
       man - an interface to the on-line reference manuals

SYNOPSIS
       man  [-c|-w|-tZ] [-H[browser]] [-T[device]] [-X[dpi]] [-adhu7V] [-i|-I]
       [-m system[,...]] [-L locale] [-p  string]  [-C	file]  [-M  path]  [-P
       pager]  [-r  prompt]  [-S  list] [-e extension] [--warnings [warnings]]
       [[section] page ...] ...
       man -l [-7] [-tZ] [-H[browser]] [-T[device]] [-X[dpi]] [-p string]  [-P
       pager] [-r prompt] [--warnings[warnings]] file ...
       man -k [apropos options] regexp ...
       man -f [whatis options] page ...

DESCRIPTION
       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.

       The table below shows the section numbers of the manual followed by the
       types of pages they contain.

       0   Header files (usually found in /usr/include)
       1   Executable programs or shell commands
       2   System calls (functions provided by the kernel)
       3   Library calls (functions within program libraries)
       4   Special files (usually found in /dev)
       5   File formats and conventions eg /etc/passwd
       6   Games
       7   Miscellaneous (including macro  packages  and  conven‐
	   tions), e.g. man(7), groff(7)
       8   System administration commands (usually only for root)
       9   Kernel routines [Non standard]

       A manual page consists of several sections.

       Conventional  section  names  include  NAME,  SYNOPSIS,	CONFIGURATION,
       DESCRIPTION, OPTIONS, EXIT STATUS, RETURN VALUE,	 ERRORS,  ENVIRONMENT,
       FILES,  VERSIONS,  CONFORMING TO,  NOTES,  BUGS,	 EXAMPLE, AUTHORS, and
       SEE ALSO.

       The following conventions apply to the SYNOPSIS section and can be used
       as a guide in other sections.

       bold text	  type exactly as shown.
       italic text	  replace with appropriate argument.
       [-abc]		  any or all arguments within [ ] are optional.
       -a|-b		  options delimited by | cannot be used together.
       argument ...	  argument is repeatable.
       [expression] ...	  entire expression within [ ] is repeatable.

       The command or function illustration is a pattern that should match all
       possible invocations.  In some cases it is advisable to illustrate sev‐
       eral  exclusive invocations as is shown in the SYNOPSIS section of this
       manual page.

EXAMPLES
       man ls
	   Display the manual page for the item (program) ls.

       man -a intro
	   Display, in succession, all of the  available  intro	 manual	 pages
	   contained  within  the manual.  It is possible to quit between suc‐
	   cessive displays or skip any of them.

       man -t alias | lpr -Pps
	   Format the manual page referenced by `alias', usually a shell  man‐
	   ual page, into the default troff or groff format and pipe it to the
	   printer named ps.  The default output for groff  is	usually	 Post‐
	   Script.  man --help should advise as to which processor is bound to
	   the -t option.

       man -l -Tdvi ./foo.1x.gz > ./foo.1x.dvi
	   This command will decompress and format  the	 nroff	source	manual
	   page	 ./foo.1x.gz  into a device independent (dvi) file.  The redi‐
	   rection is necessary as the -T flag causes output to be directed to
	   stdout  with	 no  pager.  The output could be viewed with a program
	   such as xdvi or further processed into PostScript using  a  program
	   such as dvips.

       man -k printf
	   Search the short descriptions and manual page names for the keyword
	   printf as regular expression.  Print out any	 matches.   Equivalent
	   to apropos -r printf.

       man -f smail
	   Lookup the manual pages referenced by smail and print out the short
	   descriptions of any found.  Equivalent to whatis -r smail.

OVERVIEW
       Many options are available to man in order to give as much  flexibility
       as  possible to the user.  Changes can be made to the search path, sec‐
       tion order, output  processor,  and  other  behaviours  and  operations
       detailed below.

       If set, various environment variables are interrogated to determine the
       operation of man.  It is possible  to  set  the	`catch	all'  variable
       $MANOPT	to  any	 string in command line format with the exception that
       any spaces used as part of an option's argument must be	escaped	 (pre‐
       ceded by a backslash).  man will parse $MANOPT prior to parsing its own
       command line.  Those options requiring an argument will	be  overridden
       by  the	same  options  found on the command line.  To reset all of the
       options set in $MANOPT, -D can be specified as the initial command line
       option.	This will allow man to `forget' about the options specified in
       $MANOPT although they must still have been valid.

       The manual pager utilities packaged as man-db  make  extensive  use  of
       index  database caches.	These caches contain information such as where
       each manual page can be found on the filesystem	and  what  its	whatis
       (short one line description of the man page) contains, and allow man to
       run faster than if it had to search the filesystem each	time  to  find
       the  appropriate	 manual	 page.	 If requested using the -u option, man
       will ensure that the caches remain consistent, which  can  obviate  the
       need  to	 manually run software to update traditional whatis text data‐
       bases.

       If man cannot find a mandb initiated index database  for	 a  particular
       manual  page  hierarchy,	 it will still search for the requested manual
       pages, although file globbing will be necessary to search  within  that
       hierarchy.   If whatis or apropos fails to find an index it will try to
       extract information from a traditional whatis database instead.

       These utilities	support	 compressed  source  nroff  files  having,  by
       default, the extensions of .Z, .z and .gz.  It is possible to deal with
       any compression extension, but this information must be known  at  com‐
       pile  time.   Also,  by	default, any cat pages produced are compressed
       using gzip.  Each `global' manual page hierarchy such as /usr/share/man
       or  /usr/X11R6/man  may	have  any directory as its cat page hierarchy.
       Traditionally the cat pages are stored under the same hierarchy as  the
       man  pages, but for reasons such as those specified in the File Hierar‐
       chy Standard (FHS), it may be better  to	 store	them  elsewhere.   For
       details	on how to do this, please read manpath(5).  For details on why
       to do this, read the standard.

       International support is available with this package.  Native  language
       manual  pages  are  accessible (if available on your system) via use of
       locale functions.  To activate such support, it	is  necessary  to  set
       either  $LC_MESSAGES,  $LANG  or	 another  system dependent environment
       variable to your language locale, usually specified in the POSIX 1003.1
       based format:

       <language>[_<territory>[.<character-set>[,<version>]]]

       If  the	desired page is available in your locale, it will be displayed
       in lieu of the standard (usually American English) page.

       Support for international message catalogues is also featured  in  this
       package	and  can be activated in the same way, again if available.  If
       you find that the manual pages and  message  catalogues	supplied  with
       this  package  are  not available in your native language and you would
       like to supply them, please contact the maintainer who will be  coordi‐
       nating such activity.

       For  information regarding other features and extensions available with
       this manual pager, please read the documents supplied with the package.

DEFAULTS
       man will search for the desired manual pages within the index  database
       caches.	If  the	 -u option is given, a cache consistency check is per‐
       formed to ensure the databases accurately reflect the  filesystem.   If
       this option is always given, it is not generally necessary to run mandb
       after the caches are initially created, unless a cache becomes corrupt.
       However,	 the  cache consistency check can be slow on systems with many
       manual pages installed, so it is not performed by default,  and	system
       administrators may wish to run mandb every week or so to keep the data‐
       base caches fresh.  To forestall problems caused	 by  outdated  caches,
       man will fall back to file globbing if a cache lookup fails, just as it
       would if no cache was present.

       Once a manual page has been located, a check is performed to  find  out
       if  a relative preformatted `cat' file already exists and is newer than
       the nroff file.	If it does and is, this preformatted file is (usually)
       decompressed  and then displayed, via use of a pager.  The pager can be
       specified in a number of ways, or else will fall back to a  default  is
       used  (see option -P for details).  If no cat is found or is older than
       the nroff file, the nroff is filtered through various programs  and  is
       shown immediately.

       If  a cat file can be produced (a relative cat directory exists and has
       appropriate permissions), man will compress and store the cat  file  in
       the background.

       The  filters  are deciphered by a number of means. Firstly, the command
       line option -p or the environment variable $MANROFFSEQ is interrogated.
       If  -p  was not used and the environment variable was not set, the ini‐
       tial line of the nroff file is parsed for a  preprocessor  string.   To
       contain a valid preprocessor string, the first line must resemble

       '\" <string>

       where  string  can be any combination of letters described by option -p
       below.

       If none of the above methods provide any filter information, a  default
       set is used.

       A  formatting  pipeline is formed from the filters and the primary for‐
       matter (nroff or [tg]roff with -t) and executed.	 Alternatively, if  an
       executable program mandb_nfmt (or mandb_tfmt with -t) exists in the man
       tree root, it is executed instead.  It gets passed  the	manual	source
       file, the preprocessor string, and optionally the device specified with
       -T or -E as arguments.

OPTIONS
       Non argument options that are duplicated either on the command line, in
       $MANOPT,	 or  both, are not harmful.  For options that require an argu‐
       ment, each duplication will override the previous argument value.

   General options
       -C file, --config-file=file
	      Use this user configuration file	rather	than  the  default  of
	      ~/.manpath.

       -d, --debug
	      Print debugging information.

       -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.

       --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".

   Main modes of operation
       -f, --whatis
	      Equivalent to whatis.  Display a short description from the man‐
	      ual page, if available. See whatis(1) for details.

       -k, --apropos
	      Equivalent to apropos.  Search the short	manual	page  descrip‐
	      tions  for keywords and display any matches.  See apropos(1) for
	      details.

       -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.

       -w, --where, --location
	      Don't actually display the manual pages, but do print the	 loca‐
	      tion(s) of the source nroff files that would be formatted.

       -W, --where-cat, --location-cat
	      Don't  actually display the manual pages, but do print the loca‐
	      tion(s) of the cat files that would be displayed.	 If -w and  -W
	      are both specified, print both separated by a space.

       -c, --catman
	      This  option  is	not for general use and should only be used by
	      the catman program.

       -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  man‐
	      conv(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	 hier‐
	      archy.

   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 tempo‐
	      rarily 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.

       -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 oper‐
	      ating  system's manual pages, include the system name man in the
	      argument string.	This option will override the $SYSTEM environ‐
	      ment variable.

       -M path, --manpath=path
	      Specify  an alternate manpath to use.  By default, man uses man‐
	      path 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.

       -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.)

       -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, sup‐
	      plying the option -e tcl to man  will  restrict  the  search  to
	      pages having an extension of *tcl.

       -i, --ignore-case
	      Ignore  case  when  searching  for  manual  pages.   This is the
	      default.

       -I, --match-case
	      Search for manual pages case-sensitively.

       -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.

       -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.

   Controlling formatted output
       -P pager, --pager=pager
	      Specify  which  output  pager to use.  By default, man uses less
	      -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.

       -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  sur‐
	      rounded  by `(' and `)'.	The string used to produce the default
	      could be expressed as

	      \ Manual\ page\ \$MAN_PN\ ?ltline\ %lt?L/%L.:
	      byte\ %bB?s/%s..?\ (END):?pB %pB\\%..

	      It is broken into two 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  com‐
	      pletely, use the $MANLESS environment variable described below.

       -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.

       -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.

       -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 pre‐
	      processors.  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  environ‐
	      ment  variable.	zsoelim	 is  always run as the very first pre‐
	      processor.

       -t, --troff
	      Use groff -mandoc to format the manual  page  to	stdout.	  This
	      option is not required in conjunction with -H, -T, or -Z.

       -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.

       -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.

       -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.

       -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 sup‐
	      press the use of a post-processor.  It implies -t.

   Getting help
       -h, --help
	      Print a help message and exit.

       -V, --version
	      Display version information.

EXIT STATUS
       0      Successful program execution.

       1      Usage, syntax or configuration file error.

       2      Operational error.

       3      A child process returned a non-zero exit status.

       16     At least one of the pages/files/keywords didn't exist or	wasn't
	      matched.

ENVIRONMENT
       MANPATH
	      If  $MANPATH is set, its value is used as the path to search for
	      manual pages.

       MANROFFOPT
	      The contents of $MANROFFOPT are added to the command line	 every
	      time man invokes the formatter (nroff, troff, or groff).

       MANROFFSEQ
	      If $MANROFFSEQ is set, its value is used to determine the set of
	      preprocessors to pass each manual	 page  through.	  The  default
	      preprocessor list is system dependent.

       MANSECT
	      If  $MANSECT is set, its value is a colon-delimited list of sec‐
	      tions and it is used  to	determine  which  manual  sections  to
	      search and in what order.

       MANPAGER, PAGER
	      If $MANPAGER or $PAGER is set ($MANPAGER is used in preference),
	      its value is used as the name of the program used to display the
	      manual page.  By default, less -s is used.

       MANLESS
	      If  $MANLESS  is set, man will not perform any of its usual pro‐
	      cessing to set up a prompt string for the less pager.   Instead,
	      the  value  of $MANLESS will be copied verbatim into $LESS.  For
	      example, if you want to set the prompt string unconditionally to
	      “my prompt string”, set $MANLESS to ‘-Psmy prompt string’.

       BROWSER
	      If  $BROWSER is set, its value is a colon-delimited list of com‐
	      mands, each of which in turn is used  to	try  to	 start	a  web
	      browser  for  man	 --html.  In each command, %s is replaced by a
	      filename containing the HTML output from groff, %%  is  replaced
	      by a single percent sign (%), and %c is replaced by a colon (:).

       SYSTEM If  $SYSTEM  is  set,  it will have the same effect as if it had
	      been specified as the argument to the -m option.

       MANOPT If $MANOPT is set, it will be parsed prior to man's command line
	      and  is expected to be in a similar format.  As all of the other
	      man specific environment variables can be expressed  as  command
	      line  options,  and  are	thus  candidates for being included in
	      $MANOPT it is expected that they will become obsolete.  N.B. All
	      spaces  that  should be interpreted as part of an option's argu‐
	      ment must be escaped.

       MANWIDTH
	      If $MANWIDTH is set, its value is used as the  line  length  for
	      which  manual pages should be formatted.	If it is not set, man‐
	      ual pages will be formatted with a line  length  appropriate  to
	      the  current terminal (using an ioctl(2) if available, the value
	      of $COLUMNS, or falling back to  80  characters  if  neither  is
	      available).   Cat pages will only be saved when the default for‐
	      matting can be used, that is when the terminal  line  length  is
	      between 66 and 80 characters.

       MAN_KEEP_FORMATTING
	      Normally,	 when output is not being directed to a terminal (such
	      as to a file or a pipe), formatting characters are discarded  to
	      make  it	easier to read the result without special tools.  How‐
	      ever, if $MAN_KEEP_FORMATTING is set  to	any  non-empty	value,
	      these  formatting	 characters  are retained.  This may be useful
	      for wrappers around man that can	interpret  formatting  charac‐
	      ters.

       LANG, LC_MESSAGES
	      Depending	 on system and implementation, either or both of $LANG
	      and $LC_MESSAGES will be interrogated for	 the  current  message
	      locale.  man will display its messages in that locale (if avail‐
	      able).  See setlocale(3) for precise details.

FILES
       /etc/manpath.config
	      man-db configuration file.

       /usr/share/man
	      A global manual page hierarchy.

       /usr/share/man/index.(bt|db|dir|pag)
	      A traditional global index database cache.

       /var/cache/man/index.(bt|db|dir|pag)
	      An FHS compliant global index database cache.

SEE ALSO
       mandb(8), manpath(1),  manpath(5),  apropos(1),	whatis(1),  catman(8),
       less(1),	  nroff(1),   troff(1),	 groff(1),  zsoelim(1),	 setlocale(3),
       man(7), ascii(7), latin1(7), the man-db package manual, FSSTND.

HISTORY
       1990, 1991 - Originally written by John W. Eaton (jwe@che.utexas.edu).

       Dec 23 1992: Rik Faith (faith@cs.unc.edu) applied bug fixes supplied by
       Willem Kasdorp (wkasdo@nikhefk.nikef.nl).

       30th April 1994 - 23rd February 2000: Wilf. (G.Wilford@ee.surrey.ac.uk)
       has been developing and maintaining this package with the help of a few
       dedicated people.

       30th   October	1996   -  30th	March  2001:  Fabrizio	Polacco	 <fpo‐
       lacco@debian.org> maintained and enhanced this package for  the	Debian
       project, with the help of all the community.

       31st  March  2001  - present day: Colin Watson <cjwatson@debian.org> is
       now developing and maintaining man-db.

2.5.2				  2008-05-05				MAN(1)
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