Provided by: mandoc_1.14.4-1_amd64 bug

NAME

       mandoc - format manual pages

SYNOPSIS

       mandoc [-ac] [-I os=name] [-K encoding] [-mdoc | -man] [-O options] [-T output] [-W level]
              [file ...]

DESCRIPTION

       The mandoc utility formats manual pages for display.

       By default, mandoc reads mdoc(7) or man(7) text from stdin and produces -T locale output.

       The options are as follows:

       -a      If the standard output is a terminal device and -c is not specified, use more(1)
               to paginate the output, just like man(1) would.

       -c      Copy the formatted manual pages to the standard output without using more(1) to
               paginate them.  This is the default.  It can be specified to override -a.

       -I os=name
               Override the default operating system name for the mdoc(7) Os and for the man(7)
               TH macro.

       -K encoding
               Specify the input encoding.  The supported encoding arguments are us-ascii,
               iso-8859-1, and utf-8.  If not specified, autodetection uses the first match in
               the following list:

               1.   If the first three bytes of the input file are the UTF-8 byte order mark
                    (BOM, 0xefbbbf), input is interpreted as utf-8.

               2.   If the first or second line of the input file matches the emacs mode line
                    format

                          .\" -*- [...;] coding: encoding; -*-

                    then input is interpreted according to encoding.

               3.   If the first non-ASCII byte in the file introduces a valid UTF-8 sequence,
                    input is interpreted as utf-8.

               4.   Otherwise, input is interpreted as iso-8859-1.
       -mdoc | -man
               With -mdoc, all input files are interpreted as mdoc(7).  With -man, all input
               files are interpreted as man(7).  By default, the input language is automatically
               detected for each file: if the first macro is Dd or Dt, the mdoc(7) parser is
               used; otherwise, the man(7) parser is used.  With other arguments, -m is silently
               ignored.

       -O options
               Comma-separated output options.  See the descriptions of the individual output
               formats for supported options.

       -T output
               Select the output format.  Supported values for the output argument are ascii,
               html, the default of locale, man, markdown, pdf, ps, tree, and utf8.

               The special -T lint mode only parses the input and produces no output.  It implies
               -W all and redirects parser messages, which usually appear on standard error
               output, to standard output.

       -W level
               Specify the minimum message level to be reported on the standard error output and
               to affect the exit status.  The level can be base, style, warning, error, or
               unsupp.  The base level automatically derives the operating system from the
               contents of the Os macro, from the -Ios command line option, or from the uname(3)
               return value.  The levels openbsd and netbsd are variants of base that bypass
               autodetection and request validation of base system conventions for a particular
               operating system.  The level all is an alias for base.  By default, mandoc is
               silent.  See EXIT STATUS and DIAGNOSTICS for details.

               The special option -W stop tells mandoc to exit after parsing a file that causes
               warnings or errors of at least the requested level.  No formatted output will be
               produced from that file.  If both a level and stop are requested, they can be
               joined with a comma, for example -W error,stop.

       file    Read from the given input file.  If multiple files are specified, they are
               processed in the given order.  If unspecified, mandoc reads from standard input.

       The options -fhklw are also supported and are documented in man(1).  In -f and -k mode,
       mandoc also supports the options -CMmOSs described in the apropos(1) manual.  The options
       -fkl are mutually exclusive and override each other.

   ASCII Output
       Use -T ascii to force text output in 7-bit ASCII character encoding documented in the
       ascii(7) manual page, ignoring the locale(1) set in the environment.

       Font styles are applied by using back-spaced encoding such that an underlined character
       ‘c’ is rendered as ‘_\[bs]c’, where ‘\[bs]’ is the back-space character number 8.
       Emboldened characters are rendered as ‘c\[bs]c’.

       The special characters documented in mandoc_char(7) are rendered best-effort in an ASCII
       equivalent.

       The following -O arguments are accepted:

       indent=indent
               The left margin for normal text is set to indent blank characters instead of the
               default of five for mdoc(7) and seven for man(7).  Increasing this is not
               recommended; it may result in degraded formatting, for example overfull lines or
               ugly line breaks.  When output is to a pager on a terminal that is less than 66
               columns wide, the default is reduced to three columns.

       mdoc    Format man(7) input files in mdoc(7) output style.  Specifically, this suppresses
               the two additional blank lines near the top and the bottom of each page, and it
               implies -O indent=5.  One useful application is for checking that -T man output
               formats in the same way as the mdoc(7) source it was generated from.

       width=width
               The output width is set to width instead of the default of 78.  When output is to
               a pager on a terminal that is less than 79 columns wide, the default is reduced to
               one less than the terminal width.  In any case, lines that are output in literal
               mode are never wrapped and may exceed the output width.

   HTML Output
       Output produced by -T html conforms to HTML5 using optional self-closing tags.  Default
       styles use only CSS1.  Equations rendered from eqn(7) blocks use MathML.

       The mandoc.css file documents style-sheet classes available for customising output.  If a
       style-sheet is not specified with -O style, -T html defaults to simple output (via an
       embedded style-sheet) readable in any graphical or text-based web browser.

       Non-ASCII characters are rendered as hexadecimal Unicode character references.

       The following -O arguments are accepted:

       fragment
               Omit the <!DOCTYPE> declaration and the <html>, <head>, and <body> elements and
               only emit the subtree below the <body> element.  The style argument will be
               ignored.  This is useful when embedding manual content within existing documents.

       includes=fmt
               The string fmt, for example, ../src/%I.html, is used as a template for linked
               header files (usually via the In macro).  Instances of ‘%I’ are replaced with the
               include filename.  The default is not to present a hyperlink.

       man=fmt
               The string fmt, for example, ../html%S/%N.%S.html, is used as a template for
               linked manuals (usually via the Xr macro).  Instances of ‘%N’ and ‘%S’ are
               replaced with the linked manual's name and section, respectively.  If no section
               is included, section 1 is assumed.  The default is not to present a hyperlink.

       style=style.css
               The file style.css is used for an external style-sheet.  This must be a valid
               absolute or relative URI.

   Locale Output
       By default, mandoc automatically selects UTF-8 or ASCII output according to the current
       locale(1).  If any of the environment variables LC_ALL, LC_CTYPE, or LANG are set and the
       first one that is set selects the UTF-8 character encoding, it produces UTF-8 Output;
       otherwise, it falls back to ASCII Output.  This output mode can also be selected
       explicitly with -T locale.

   Man Output
       Use -T man to translate mdoc(7) input into man(7) output format.  This is useful for
       distributing manual sources to legacy systems lacking mdoc(7) formatters.

       If the input format of a file is man(7), the input is copied to the output, expanding any
       roff(7) so requests.  The parser is also run, and as usual, the -W level controls which
       DIAGNOSTICS are displayed before copying the input to the output.

   Markdown Output
       Use -T markdown to translate mdoc(7) input to the markdown format conforming to John
       Gruber's 2004 specification: http://daringfireball.net/projects/markdown/syntax.text.  The
       output also almost conforms to the CommonMark: http://commonmark.org/ specification.

       The character set used for the markdown output is ASCII.  Non-ASCII characters are encoded
       as HTML entities.  Since that is not possible in literal font contexts, because these are
       rendered as code spans and code blocks in the markdown output, non-ASCII characters are
       transliterated to ASCII approximations in these contexts.

       Markdown is a very weak markup language, so all semantic markup is lost, and even part of
       the presentational markup may be lost.  Do not use this as an intermediate step in
       converting to HTML; instead, use -T html directly.

       The man(7), tbl(7), and eqn(7) input languages are not supported by -T markdown output
       mode.

   PDF Output
       PDF-1.1 output may be generated by -T pdf.  See PostScript Output for -O arguments and
       defaults.

   PostScript Output
       PostScript "Adobe-3.0" Level-2 pages may be generated by -T ps.  Output pages default to
       letter sized and are rendered in the Times font family, 11-point.  Margins are calculated
       as 1/9 the page length and width.  Line-height is 1.4m.

       Special characters are rendered as in ASCII Output.

       The following -O arguments are accepted:

       paper=name
               The paper size name may be one of a3, a4, a5, legal, or letter.  You may also
               manually specify dimensions as NNxNN, width by height in millimetres.  If an
               unknown value is encountered, letter is used.

   UTF-8 Output
       Use -T utf8 to force text output in UTF-8 multi-byte character encoding, ignoring the
       locale(1) settings in the environment.  See ASCII Output regarding font styles and -O
       arguments.

       On operating systems lacking locale or wide character support, and on those where the
       internal character representation is not UCS-4, mandoc always falls back to ASCII Output.

   Syntax tree output
       Use -T tree to show a human readable representation of the syntax tree.  It is useful for
       debugging the source code of manual pages.  The exact format is subject to change, so
       don't write parsers for it.

       The first paragraph shows meta data found in the mdoc(7) prologue, on the man(7) TH line,
       or the fallbacks used.

       In the tree dump, each output line shows one syntax tree node.  Child nodes are indented
       with respect to their parent node.  The columns are:

       1.   For macro nodes, the macro name; for text and tbl(7) nodes, the content.  There is a
            special format for eqn(7) nodes.
       2.   Node type (text, elem, block, head, body, body-end, tail, tbl, eqn).
       3.   Flags:
            -   An opening parenthesis if the node is an opening delimiter.
            -   An asterisk if the node starts a new input line.
            -   The input line number (starting at one).
            -   A colon.
            -   The input column number (starting at one).
            -   A closing parenthesis if the node is a closing delimiter.
            -   A full stop if the node ends a sentence.
            -   BROKEN if the node is a block broken by another block.
            -   NOSRC if the node is not in the input file, but automatically generated from
                macros.
            -   NOPRT if the node is not supposed to generate output for any output format.
       The following -O argument is accepted:

       noval   Skip validation and show the unvalidated syntax tree.  This can help to find out
               whether a given behaviour is caused by the parser or by the validator.  Meta data
               is not available in this case.

ENVIRONMENT

       LC_CTYPE  The character encoding locale(1).  When Locale Output is selected, it decides
                 whether to use ASCII or UTF-8 output format.  It never affects the
                 interpretation of input files.

       MANPAGER  Any non-empty value of the environment variable MANPAGER is used instead of the
                 standard pagination program, more(1); see man(1) for details.  Only used if -a
                 or -l is specified.

       PAGER     Specifies the pagination program to use when MANPAGER is not defined.  If
                 neither PAGER nor MANPAGER is defined, more(1) -s is used.  Only used if -a or
                 -l is specified.

EXIT STATUS

       The mandoc utility exits with one of the following values, controlled by the message level
       associated with the -W option:

       0       No base system convention violations, style suggestions, warnings, or errors
               occurred, or those that did were ignored because they were lower than the
               requested level.
       1       At least one base system convention violation or style suggestion occurred, but no
               warning or error, and -W base or -W style was specified.
       2       At least one warning occurred, but no error, and -W warning or a lower level was
               requested.
       3       At least one parsing error occurred, but no unsupported feature was encountered,
               and -W error or a lower level was requested.
       4       At least one unsupported feature was encountered, and -W unsupp or a lower level
               was requested.
       5       Invalid command line arguments were specified.  No input files have been read.
       6       An operating system error occurred, for example exhaustion of memory, file
               descriptors, or process table entries.  Such errors cause mandoc to exit at once,
               possibly in the middle of parsing or formatting a file.

       Note that selecting -T lint output mode implies -W all.

EXAMPLES

       To page manuals to the terminal:

             $ mandoc -l mandoc.1 man.1 apropos.1 makewhatis.8

       To produce HTML manuals with mandoc.css as the style-sheet:

             $ mandoc -T html -O style=mandoc.css mdoc.7 > mdoc.7.html

       To check over a large set of manuals:

             $ mandoc -T lint `find /usr/src -name \*\.[1-9]`

       To produce a series of PostScript manuals for A4 paper:

             $ mandoc -T ps -O paper=a4 mdoc.7 man.7 > manuals.ps

       Convert a modern mdoc(7) manual to the older man(7) format, for use on systems lacking an
       mdoc(7) parser:

             $ mandoc -T man foo.mdoc > foo.man

DIAGNOSTICS

       Messages displayed by mandoc follow this format:

             mandoc: file:line:column: level: message: macro args (os)

       Line and column numbers start at 1.  Both are omitted for messages referring to an input
       file as a whole.  Macro names and arguments are omitted where meaningless.  The os
       operating system specifier is omitted for messages that are relevant for all operating
       systems.  Fatal messages about invalid command line arguments or operating system errors,
       for example when memory is exhausted, may also omit the file and level fields.

       Message levels have the following meanings:

       unsupp   An input file uses unsupported low-level roff(7) features.  The output may be
                incomplete and/or misformatted, so using GNU troff instead of mandoc to process
                the file may be preferable.

       error    Indicates a risk of information loss or severe misformatting, in most cases
                caused by serious syntax errors.

       warning  Indicates a risk that the information shown or its formatting may mismatch the
                author's intent in minor ways.  Additionally, syntax errors are classified at
                least as warnings, even if they do not usually cause misformatting.

       style    An input file uses dubious or discouraged style.  This is not a complaint about
                the syntax, and probably neither formatting nor portability are in danger.  While
                great care is taken to avoid false positives on the higher message levels, the
                style level tries to reduce the probability that issues go unnoticed, so it may
                occasionally issue bogus suggestions.  Please use your good judgement to decide
                whether any particular style suggestion really justifies a change to the input
                file.

       base     A convention used in the base system of a specific operating system is not
                adhered to.  These are not markup mistakes, and neither the quality of formatting
                nor portability are in danger.  Messages of the base level are printed with the
                more intuitive style level tag.

       Messages of the base, style, warning, error, and unsupp levels except those about non-
       existent or unreadable input files are hidden unless their level, or a lower level, is
       requested using a -W option or -T lint output mode.

       As indicated below, all base and some style checks are only performed if a specific
       operating system name occurs in the arguments of the -W command line option, of the Os
       macro, of the -Ios command line option, or, if neither are present, in the return value of
       the uname(3) function.

   Conventions for base system manuals
       Mdocdate found
       (mdoc, NetBSD) The Dd macro uses CVS Mdocdate keyword substitution, which is not supported
       by the NetBSD base system.  Consider using the conventional “Month dd, yyyy” format
       instead.

       Mdocdate missing
       (mdoc, OpenBSD) The Dd macro does not use CVS Mdocdate keyword substitution, but using it
       is conventionally expected in the OpenBSD base system.

       unknown architecture
       (mdoc, OpenBSD, NetBSD) The third argument of the Dt macro does not match any of the
       architectures this operating system is running on.

       operating system explicitly specified
       (mdoc, OpenBSD, NetBSD) The Os macro has an argument.  In the base system, it is
       conventionally left blank.

       RCS id missing
       (OpenBSD, NetBSD) The manual page lacks the comment line with the RCS identifier generated
       by CVS OpenBSD or NetBSD keyword substitution as conventionally used in these operating
       systems.

       referenced manual not found
       (mdoc) An Xr macro references a manual page that is not found in the base system.  The
       path to look for base system manuals is configurable at compile time and defaults to
       /usr/share/man: /usr/X11R6/man.

   Style suggestions
       legacy man(7) date format
       (mdoc) The Dd macro uses the legacy man(7) date format “yyyy-dd-mm”.  Consider using the
       conventional mdoc(7) date format “Month dd, yyyy” instead.

       normalizing date format to: ...
       (mdoc, man) The Dd or TH macro provides an abbreviated month name or a day number with a
       leading zero.  In the formatted output, the month name is written out in full and the
       leading zero is omitted.

       lower case character in document title
       (mdoc, man) The title is still used as given in the Dt or TH macro.

       duplicate RCS id
       A single manual page contains two copies of the RCS identifier for the same operating
       system.  Consider deleting the later instance and moving the first one up to the top of
       the page.

       possible typo in section name
       (mdoc) Fuzzy string matching revealed that the argument of an Sh macro is similar, but not
       identical to a standard section name.

       unterminated quoted argument
       (roff) Macro arguments can be enclosed in double quote characters such that space
       characters and macro names contained in the quoted argument need not be escaped.  The
       closing quote of the last argument of a macro can be omitted.  However, omitting it is not
       recommended because it makes the code harder to read.

       useless macro
       (mdoc) A Bt, Tn, or Ud macro was found.  Simply delete it: it serves no useful purpose.

       consider using OS macro
       (mdoc) A string was found in plain text or in a Bx macro that could be represented using
       Ox, Nx, Fx, or Dx.

       errnos out of order
       (mdoc, NetBSD) The Er items in a Bl list are not in alphabetical order.

       duplicate errno
       (mdoc, NetBSD) A Bl list contains two consecutive It entries describing the same Er
       number.

       trailing delimiter
       (mdoc) The last argument of an Ex, Fo, Nd, Nm, Os, Sh, Ss, St, or Sx macro ends with a
       trailing delimiter.  This is usually bad style and often indicates typos.  Most likely,
       the delimiter can be removed.

       no blank before trailing delimiter
       (mdoc) The last argument of a macro that supports trailing delimiter arguments is longer
       than one byte and ends with a trailing delimiter.  Consider inserting a blank such that
       the delimiter becomes a separate argument, thus moving it out of the scope of the macro.

       fill mode already enabled, skipping
       (man) A fi request occurs even though the document is still in fill mode, or already
       switched back to fill mode.  It has no effect.

       fill mode already disabled, skipping
       (man) An nf request occurs even though the document already switched to no-fill mode and
       did not switch back to fill mode yet.  It has no effect.

       verbatim "--", maybe consider using \(em
       (mdoc) Even though the ASCII output device renders an em-dash as "--", that is not a good
       way to write it in an input file because it renders poorly on all other output devices.

       function name without markup
       (mdoc) A word followed by an empty pair of parentheses occurs on a text line.  Consider
       using an Fn or Xr macro.

       whitespace at end of input line
       (mdoc, man, roff) Whitespace at the end of input lines is almost never semantically
       significant — but in the odd case where it might be, it is extremely confusing when
       reviewing and maintaining documents.

       bad comment style
       (roff) Comment lines start with a dot, a backslash, and a double-quote character.  The
       mandoc utility treats the line as a comment line even without the backslash, but leaving
       out the backslash might not be portable.

   Warnings related to the document prologue
       missing manual title, using UNTITLED
       (mdoc) A Dt macro has no arguments, or there is no Dt macro before the first non-prologue
       macro.

       missing manual title, using ""
       (man) There is no TH macro, or it has no arguments.

       missing manual section, using ""
       (mdoc, man) A Dt or TH macro lacks the mandatory section argument.

       unknown manual section
       (mdoc) The section number in a Dt line is invalid, but still used.

       missing date, using today's date
       (mdoc, man) The document was parsed as mdoc(7) and it has no Dd macro, or the Dd macro has
       no arguments or only empty arguments; or the document was parsed as man(7) and it has no
       TH macro, or the TH macro has less than three arguments or its third argument is empty.

       cannot parse date, using it verbatim
       (mdoc, man) The date given in a Dd or TH macro does not follow the conventional format.

       date in the future, using it anyway
       (mdoc, man) The date given in a Dd or TH macro is more than a day ahead of the current
       system time(3).

       missing Os macro, using ""
       (mdoc) The default or current system is not shown in this case.

       late prologue macro
       (mdoc) A Dd or Os macro occurs after some non-prologue macro, but still takes effect.

       prologue macros out of order
       (mdoc) The prologue macros are not given in the conventional order Dd, Dt, Os.  All three
       macros are used even when given in another order.

   Warnings regarding document structure
       .so is fragile, better use ln(1)
       (roff) Including files only works when the parser program runs with the correct current
       working directory.

       no document body
       (mdoc, man) The document body contains neither text nor macros.  An empty document is
       shown, consisting only of a header and a footer line.

       content before first section header
       (mdoc, man) Some macros or text precede the first Sh or SH section header.  The offending
       macros and text are parsed and added to the top level of the syntax tree, outside any
       section block.

       first section is not NAME
       (mdoc) The argument of the first Sh macro is not ‘NAME’.  This may confuse makewhatis(8)
       and apropos(1).

       NAME section without Nm before Nd
       (mdoc) The NAME section does not contain any Nm child macro before the first Nd macro.

       NAME section without description
       (mdoc) The NAME section lacks the mandatory Nd child macro.

       description not at the end of NAME
       (mdoc) The NAME section does contain an Nd child macro, but other content follows it.

       bad NAME section content
       (mdoc) The NAME section contains plain text or macros other than Nm and Nd.

       missing comma before name
       (mdoc) The NAME section contains an Nm macro that is neither the first one nor preceded by
       a comma.

       missing description line, using ""
       (mdoc) The Nd macro lacks the required argument.  The title line of the manual will end
       after the dash.

       description line outside NAME section
       (mdoc) An Nd macro appears outside the NAME section.  The arguments are printed anyway and
       the following text is used for apropos(1), but none of that behaviour is portable.

       sections out of conventional order
       (mdoc) A standard section occurs after another section it usually precedes.  All section
       titles are used as given, and the order of sections is not changed.

       duplicate section title
       (mdoc) The same standard section title occurs more than once.

       unexpected section
       (mdoc) A standard section header occurs in a section of the manual where it normally isn't
       useful.

       cross reference to self
       (mdoc) An Xr macro refers to a name and section matching the section of the present manual
       page and a name mentioned in an Nm macro in the NAME or SYNOPSIS section, or in an Fn or
       Fo macro in the SYNOPSIS.  Consider using Nm or Fn instead of Xr.

       unusual Xr order
       (mdoc) In the SEE ALSO section, an Xr macro with a lower section number follows one with a
       higher number, or two Xr macros referring to the same section are out of alphabetical
       order.

       unusual Xr punctuation
       (mdoc) In the SEE ALSO section, punctuation between two Xr macros differs from a single
       comma, or there is trailing punctuation after the last Xr macro.

       AUTHORS section without An macro
       (mdoc) An AUTHORS sections contains no An macros, or only empty ones.  Probably, there are
       author names lacking markup.

   Warnings related to macros and nesting
       obsolete macro
       (mdoc) See the mdoc(7) manual for replacements.

       macro neither callable nor escaped
       (mdoc) The name of a macro that is not callable appears on a macro line.  It is printed
       verbatim.  If the intention is to call it, move it to its own input line; otherwise,
       escape it by prepending ‘\&’.

       skipping paragraph macro
       In mdoc(7) documents, this happens
       -   at the beginning and end of sections and subsections
       -   right before non-compact lists and displays
       -   at the end of items in non-column, non-compact lists
       -   and for multiple consecutive paragraph macros.
       In man(7) documents, it happens
       -   for empty P, PP, and LP macros
       -   for IP macros having neither head nor body arguments
       -   for br or sp right after SH or SS

       moving paragraph macro out of list
       (mdoc) A list item in a Bl list contains a trailing paragraph macro.  The paragraph macro
       is moved after the end of the list.

       skipping no-space macro
       (mdoc) An input line begins with an Ns macro, or the next argument after an Ns macro is an
       isolated closing delimiter.  The macro is ignored.

       blocks badly nested
       (mdoc) If two blocks intersect, one should completely contain the other.  Otherwise,
       rendered output is likely to look strange in any output format, and rendering in SGML-
       based output formats is likely to be outright wrong because such languages do not support
       badly nested blocks at all.  Typical examples of badly nested blocks are "Ao Bo Ac Bc" and
       "Ao Bq Ac".  In these examples, Ac breaks Bo and Bq, respectively.

       nested displays are not portable
       (mdoc) A Bd, D1, or Dl display occurs nested inside another Bd display.  This works with
       mandoc, but fails with most other implementations.

       moving content out of list
       (mdoc) A Bl list block contains text or macros before the first It macro.  The offending
       children are moved before the beginning of the list.

       first macro on line
       Inside a Bl -column list, a Ta macro occurs as the first macro on a line, which is not
       portable.

       line scope broken
       (man) While parsing the next-line scope of the previous macro, another macro is found that
       prematurely terminates the previous one.  The previous, interrupted macro is deleted from
       the parse tree.

   Warnings related to missing arguments
       skipping empty request
       (roff, eqn) The macro name is missing from a macro definition request, or an eqn(7)
       control statement or operation keyword lacks its required argument.

       conditional request controls empty scope
       (roff) A conditional request is only useful if any of the following follows it on the same
       logical input line:
       -   The ‘\{’ keyword to open a multi-line scope.
       -   A request or macro or some text, resulting in a single-line scope.
       -   The immediate end of the logical line without any intervening whitespace, resulting in
           next-line scope.
       Here, a conditional request is followed by trailing whitespace only, and there is no other
       content on its logical input line.  Note that it doesn't matter whether the logical input
       line is split across multiple physical input lines using ‘\’ line continuation characters.
       This is one of the rare cases where trailing whitespace is syntactically significant.  The
       conditional request controls a scope containing whitespace only, so it is unlikely to have
       a significant effect, except that it may control a following el clause.

       skipping empty macro
       (mdoc) The indicated macro has no arguments and hence no effect.

       empty block
       (mdoc, man) A Bd, Bk, Bl, D1, Dl, MT, RS, or UR block contains nothing in its body and
       will produce no output.

       empty argument, using 0n
       (mdoc) The required width is missing after Bd or Bl -offset or -width.

       missing display type, using -ragged
       (mdoc) The Bd macro is invoked without the required display type.

       list type is not the first argument
       (mdoc) In a Bl macro, at least one other argument precedes the type argument.  The mandoc
       utility copes with any argument order, but some other mdoc(7) implementations do not.

       missing -width in -tag list, using 8n
       (mdoc) Every Bl macro having the -tag argument requires -width, too.

       missing utility name, using ""
       (mdoc) The Ex -std macro is called without an argument before Nm has first been called
       with an argument.

       missing function name, using ""
       (mdoc) The Fo macro is called without an argument.  No function name is printed.

       empty head in list item
       (mdoc) In a Bl -diag, -hang, -inset, -ohang, or -tag list, an It macro lacks the required
       argument.  The item head is left empty.

       empty list item
       (mdoc) In a Bl -bullet, -dash, -enum, or -hyphen list, an It block is empty.  An empty
       list item is shown.

       missing argument, using next line
       (mdoc) An It macro in a Bd -column list has no arguments.  While mandoc uses the text or
       macros of the following line, if any, for the cell, other formatters may misformat the
       list.

       missing font type, using \fR
       (mdoc) A Bf macro has no argument.  It switches to the default font.

       unknown font type, using \fR
       (mdoc) The Bf argument is invalid.  The default font is used instead.

       nothing follows prefix
       (mdoc) A Pf macro has no argument, or only one argument and no macro follows on the same
       input line.  This defeats its purpose; in particular, spacing is not suppressed before the
       text or macros following on the next input line.

       empty reference block
       (mdoc) An Rs macro is immediately followed by an Re macro on the next input line.  Such an
       empty block does not produce any output.

       missing section argument
       (mdoc) An Xr macro lacks its second, section number argument.  The first argument, i.e.
       the name, is printed, but without subsequent parentheses.

       missing -std argument, adding it
       (mdoc) An Ex or Rv macro lacks the required -std argument.  The mandoc utility assumes
       -std even when it is not specified, but other implementations may not.

       missing option string, using ""
       (man) The OP macro is invoked without any argument.  An empty pair of square brackets is
       shown.

       missing resource identifier, using ""
       (man) The MT or UR macro is invoked without any argument.  An empty pair of angle brackets
       is shown.

       missing eqn box, using ""
       (eqn) A diacritic mark or a binary operator is found, but there is nothing to the left of
       it.  An empty box is inserted.

   Warnings related to bad macro arguments
       duplicate argument
       (mdoc) A Bd or Bl macro has more than one -compact, more than one -offset, or more than
       one -width argument.  All but the last instances of these arguments are ignored.

       skipping duplicate argument
       (mdoc) An An macro has more than one -split or -nosplit argument.  All but the first of
       these arguments are ignored.

       skipping duplicate display type
       (mdoc) A Bd macro has more than one type argument; the first one is used.

       skipping duplicate list type
       (mdoc) A Bl macro has more than one type argument; the first one is used.

       skipping -width argument
       (mdoc) A Bl -column, -diag, -ohang, -inset, or -item list has a -width argument.  That has
       no effect.

       wrong number of cells
       In a line of a Bl -column list, the number of tabs or Ta macros is less than the number
       expected from the list header line or exceeds the expected number by more than one.
       Missing cells remain empty, and all cells exceeding the number of columns are joined into
       one single cell.

       unknown AT&T UNIX version
       (mdoc) An At macro has an invalid argument.  It is used verbatim, with "AT&T UNIX "
       prefixed to it.

       comma in function argument
       (mdoc) An argument of an Fa or Fn macro contains a comma; it should probably be split into
       two arguments.

       parenthesis in function name
       (mdoc) The first argument of an Fc or Fn macro contains an opening or closing parenthesis;
       that's probably wrong, parentheses are added automatically.

       unknown library name
       (mdoc, not on OpenBSD) An Lb macro has an unknown name argument and will be rendered as
       "library “name”".

       invalid content in Rs block
       (mdoc) An Rs block contains plain text or non-% macros.  The bogus content is left in the
       syntax tree.  Formatting may be poor.

       invalid Boolean argument
       (mdoc) An Sm macro has an argument other than on or off.  The invalid argument is moved
       out of the macro, which leaves the macro empty, causing it to toggle the spacing mode.

       unknown font, skipping request
       (man, tbl) A roff(7) ft request or a tbl(7) f layout modifier has an unknown font
       argument.

       odd number of characters in request
       (roff) A tr request contains an odd number of characters.  The last character is mapped to
       the blank character.

   Warnings related to plain text
       blank line in fill mode, using .sp
       (mdoc) The meaning of blank input lines is only well-defined in non-fill mode: In fill
       mode, line breaks of text input lines are not supposed to be significant.  However, for
       compatibility with groff, blank lines in fill mode are replaced with sp requests.

       tab in filled text
       (mdoc, man) The meaning of tab characters is only well-defined in non-fill mode: In fill
       mode, whitespace is not supposed to be significant on text input lines.  As an
       implementation dependent choice, tab characters on text lines are passed through to the
       formatters in any case.  Given that the text before the tab character will be filled, it
       is hard to predict which tab stop position the tab will advance to.

       new sentence, new line
       (mdoc) A new sentence starts in the middle of a text line.  Start it on a new input line
       to help formatters produce correct spacing.

       invalid escape sequence
       (roff) An escape sequence has an invalid opening argument delimiter, lacks the closing
       argument delimiter, or the argument has too few characters.  If the argument is
       incomplete, \* and \n expand to an empty string, \B to the digit ‘0’, and \w to the length
       of the incomplete argument.  All other invalid escape sequences are ignored.

       undefined string, using ""
       (roff) If a string is used without being defined before, its value is implicitly set to
       the empty string.  However, defining strings explicitly before use keeps the code more
       readable.

   Warnings related to tables
       tbl line starts with span
       (tbl) The first cell in a table layout line is a horizontal span (‘s’).  Data provided for
       this cell is ignored, and nothing is printed in the cell.

       tbl column starts with span
       (tbl) The first line of a table layout specification requests a vertical span (‘^’).  Data
       provided for this cell is ignored, and nothing is printed in the cell.

       skipping vertical bar in tbl layout
       (tbl) A table layout specification contains more than two consecutive vertical bars.  A
       double bar is printed, all additional bars are discarded.

   Errors related to tables
       non-alphabetic character in tbl options
       (tbl) The table options line contains a character other than a letter, blank, or comma
       where the beginning of an option name is expected.  The character is ignored.

       skipping unknown tbl option
       (tbl) The table options line contains a string of letters that does not match any known
       option name.  The word is ignored.

       missing tbl option argument
       (tbl) A table option that requires an argument is not followed by an opening parenthesis,
       or the opening parenthesis is immediately followed by a closing parenthesis.  The option
       is ignored.

       wrong tbl option argument size
       (tbl) A table option argument contains an invalid number of characters.  Both the option
       and the argument are ignored.

       empty tbl layout
       (tbl) A table layout specification is completely empty, specifying zero lines and zero
       columns.  As a fallback, a single left-justified column is used.

       invalid character in tbl layout
       (tbl) A table layout specification contains a character that can neither be interpreted as
       a layout key character nor as a layout modifier, or a modifier precedes the first key.
       The invalid character is discarded.

       unmatched parenthesis in tbl layout
       (tbl) A table layout specification contains an opening parenthesis, but no matching
       closing parenthesis.  The rest of the input line, starting from the parenthesis, has no
       effect.

       tbl without any data cells
       (tbl) A table does not contain any data cells.  It will probably produce no output.

       ignoring data in spanned tbl cell
       (tbl) A table cell is marked as a horizontal span (‘s’) or vertical span (‘^’) in the
       table layout, but it contains data.  The data is ignored.

       ignoring extra tbl data cells
       (tbl) A data line contains more cells than the corresponding layout line.  The data in the
       extra cells is ignored.

       data block open at end of tbl
       (tbl) A data block is opened with T{, but never closed with a matching T}.  The remaining
       data lines of the table are all put into one cell, and any remaining cells stay empty.

   Errors related to roff, mdoc, and man code
       duplicate prologue macro
       (mdoc) One of the prologue macros occurs more than once.  The last instance overrides all
       previous ones.

       skipping late title macro
       (mdoc) The Dt macro appears after the first non-prologue macro.  Traditional formatters
       cannot handle this because they write the page header before parsing the document body.
       Even though this technical restriction does not apply to mandoc, traditional semantics is
       preserved.  The late macro is discarded including its arguments.

       input stack limit exceeded, infinite loop?
       (roff) Explicit recursion limits are implemented for the following features, in order to
       prevent infinite loops:
       -   expansion of nested escape sequences including expansion of strings and number
           registers,
       -   expansion of nested user-defined macros,
       -   and so file inclusion.
       When a limit is hit, the output is incorrect, typically losing some content, but the
       parser can continue.

       skipping bad character
       (mdoc, man, roff) The input file contains a byte that is not a printable ascii(7)
       character.  The message mentions the character number.  The offending byte is replaced
       with a question mark (‘?’).  Consider editing the input file to replace the byte with an
       ASCII transliteration of the intended character.

       skipping unknown macro
       (mdoc, man, roff) The first identifier on a request or macro line is neither recognized as
       a roff(7) request, nor as a user-defined macro, nor, respectively, as an mdoc(7) or man(7)
       macro.  It may be mistyped or unsupported.  The request or macro is discarded including
       its arguments.

       skipping insecure request
       (roff) An input file attempted to run a shell command or to read or write an external
       file.  Such attempts are denied for security reasons.

       skipping item outside list
       (mdoc, eqn) An It macro occurs outside any Bl list, or an eqn(7) above delimiter occurs
       outside any pile.  It is discarded including its arguments.

       skipping column outside column list
       (mdoc) A Ta macro occurs outside any Bl -column block.  It is discarded including its
       arguments.

       skipping end of block that is not open
       (mdoc, man, eqn, tbl, roff) Various syntax elements can only be used to explicitly close
       blocks that have previously been opened.  An mdoc(7) block closing macro, a man(7) ME, RE
       or UE macro, an eqn(7) right delimiter or closing brace, or the end of an equation, table,
       or roff(7) conditional request is encountered but no matching block is open.  The
       offending request or macro is discarded.

       fewer RS blocks open, skipping
       (man) The RE macro is invoked with an argument, but less than the specified number of RS
       blocks is open.  The RE macro is discarded.

       inserting missing end of block
       (mdoc, tbl) Various mdoc(7) macros as well as tables require explicit closing by dedicated
       macros.  A block that doesn't support bad nesting ends before all of its children are
       properly closed.  The open child nodes are closed implicitly.

       appending missing end of block
       (mdoc, man, eqn, tbl, roff) At the end of the document, an explicit mdoc(7) block, a
       man(7) next-line scope or MT, RS or UR block, an equation, table, or roff(7) conditional
       or ignore block is still open.  The open block is closed implicitly.

       escaped character not allowed in a name
       (roff) Macro, string and register identifiers consist of printable, non-whitespace ASCII
       characters.  Escape sequences and characters and strings expressed in terms of them cannot
       form part of a name.  The first argument of an am, as, de, ds, nr, or rr request, or any
       argument of an rm request, or the name of a request or user defined macro being called, is
       terminated by an escape sequence.  In the cases of as, ds, and nr, the request has no
       effect at all.  In the cases of am, de, rr, and rm, what was parsed up to this point is
       used as the arguments to the request, and the rest of the input line is discarded
       including the escape sequence.  When parsing for a request or a user-defined macro name to
       be called, only the escape sequence is discarded.  The characters preceding it are used as
       the request or macro name, the characters following it are used as the arguments to the
       request or macro.

       NOT IMPLEMENTED: Bd -file
       (mdoc) For security reasons, the Bd macro does not support the -file argument.  By
       requesting the inclusion of a sensitive file, a malicious document might otherwise trick a
       privileged user into inadvertently displaying the file on the screen, revealing the file
       content to bystanders.  The argument is ignored including the file name following it.

       skipping display without arguments
       (mdoc) A Bd block macro does not have any arguments.  The block is discarded, and the
       block content is displayed in whatever mode was active before the block.

       missing list type, using -item
       (mdoc) A Bl macro fails to specify the list type.

       argument is not numeric, using 1
       (roff) The argument of a ce request is not a number.

       missing manual name, using ""
       (mdoc) The first call to Nm, or any call in the NAME section, lacks the required argument.

       uname(3) system call failed, using UNKNOWN
       (mdoc) The Os macro is called without arguments, and the uname(3) system call failed.  As
       a workaround, mandoc can be compiled with -DOSNAME="\"string\"".

       unknown standard specifier
       (mdoc) An St macro has an unknown argument and is discarded.

       skipping request without numeric argument
       (roff, eqn) An it request or an eqn(7) size or gsize statement has a non-numeric or
       negative argument or no argument at all.  The invalid request or statement is ignored.

       NOT IMPLEMENTED: .so with absolute path or ".."
       (roff) For security reasons, mandoc allows so file inclusion requests only with relative
       paths and only without ascending to any parent directory.  By requesting the inclusion of
       a sensitive file, a malicious document might otherwise trick a privileged user into
       inadvertently displaying the file on the screen, revealing the file content to bystanders.
       mandoc only shows the path as it appears behind so.

       .so request failed
       (roff) Servicing a so request requires reading an external file, but the file could not be
       opened.  mandoc only shows the path as it appears behind so.

       skipping all arguments
       (mdoc, man, eqn, roff) An mdoc(7) Bt, Ed, Ef, Ek, El, Lp, Pp, Re, Rs, or Ud macro, an It
       macro in a list that don't support item heads, a man(7) LP, P, or PP macro, an eqn(7) EQ
       or EN macro, or a roff(7) br, fi, or nf request or ‘..’  block closing request is invoked
       with at least one argument.  All arguments are ignored.

       skipping excess arguments
       (mdoc, man, roff) A macro or request is invoked with too many arguments:
         -   Fo, MT, PD, RS, UR, ft, or sp with more than one argument
         -   An with another argument after -split or -nosplit
         -   RE with more than one argument or with a non-integer argument
         -   OP or a request of the de family with more than two arguments
         -   Dt with more than three arguments
         -   TH with more than five arguments
         -   Bd, Bk, or Bl with invalid arguments
       The excess arguments are ignored.

   Unsupported features
       input too large
       (mdoc, man) Currently, mandoc cannot handle input files larger than its arbitrary size
       limit of 2^31 bytes (2 Gigabytes).  Since useful manuals are always small, this is not a
       problem in practice.  Parsing is aborted as soon as the condition is detected.

       unsupported control character
       (roff) An ASCII control character supported by other roff(7) implementations but not by
       mandoc was found in an input file.  It is replaced by a question mark.

       unsupported roff request
       (roff) An input file contains a roff(7) request supported by GNU troff or Heirloom troff
       but not by mandoc, and it is likely that this will cause information loss or considerable
       misformatting.

       eqn delim option in tbl
       (eqn, tbl) The options line of a table defines equation delimiters.  Any equation source
       code contained in the table will be printed unformatted.

       unsupported table layout modifier
       (tbl) A table layout specification contains an ‘m’ modifier.  The modifier is discarded.

       ignoring macro in table
       (tbl, mdoc, man) A table contains an invocation of an mdoc(7) or man(7) macro or of an
       undefined macro.  The macro is ignored, and its arguments are handled as if they were a
       text line.

SEE ALSO

       apropos(1), man(1), eqn(7), man(7), mandoc_char(7), mdoc(7), roff(7), tbl(7)

HISTORY

       The mandoc utility first appeared in OpenBSD 4.8.  The option -I appeared in OpenBSD 5.2,
       and -aCcfhKklMSsw in OpenBSD 5.7.

AUTHORS

       The mandoc utility was written by Kristaps Dzonsons <kristaps@bsd.lv> and is maintained by
       Ingo Schwarze <schwarze@openbsd.org>.