NAME

       man - display manual pages

SYNOPSIS

       man [-acfhklw] [-C file] [-M path] [-m path] [-S subsection] [[-s] section] name ...

DESCRIPTION

       The man utility displays the manual pages entitled name.  Pages may be selected according
       to a specific category (section) or machine architecture (subsection).

       The options are as follows:

       -a      Display all matching manual pages.  Normally, only the first 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.

               When using -c, most terminal devices are unable to show the markup.  To print the
               output of man to the terminal with markup but without using a pager, pipe it to
               ul(1).  To remove the markup, pipe the output to col(1) -b instead.

       -f      A synonym for whatis(1).  It searches for name in manual page names and displays
               the header lines from all matching pages.  The search is case insensitive and
               matches whole words only.

       -h      Display only the SYNOPSIS lines of the requested manual pages.  Implies -a and -c.

       -k      A synonym for apropos(1).  Instead of name, an expression can be provided using
               the syntax described in the apropos(1) manual.  By default, it displays the header
               lines of all matching pages.

       -l      A synonym for mandoc(1).  The name arguments are interpreted as filenames.  No
               search is done and file, path, section, subsection, and -w are ignored.  This
               option implies -a.

       -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.

       -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.

       -S subsection
               Only show pages for the specified machine(1) architecture.  subsection is case
               insensitive.

               By default manual pages for all architectures are installed.  Therefore this
               option can be used to view pages for one architecture whilst using another.

               This option overrides the MACHINE environment variable.

       [-s] section
               Only select manuals from the specified section.  The currently available sections
               are:

                     1         General commands (tools and utilities).
                     2         System calls and error numbers.
                     3         Library functions.
                     3p        perl(1) programmer's reference guide.
                     4         Device drivers.
                     5         File formats.
                     6         Games.
                     7         Miscellaneous information.
                     8         System maintenance and operation commands.
                     9         Kernel internals.

               If not specified and a match is found in more than one section, the first match is
               selected from the following list: 1, 8, 6, 2, 3, 5, 7, 4, 9, 3p.

       -w      List the pathnames of all matching manual pages instead of displaying any of them.

       The options -IKOTW are also supported and are documented in mandoc(1).  The options -fkl
       are mutually exclusive and override each other.

       Guidelines for writing man pages can be found in mdoc(7).

       If both a formatted and an unformatted version of the same manual page, for example
       cat1/foo.0 and man1/foo.1, exist in the same directory, only the unformatted version is
       used.

ENVIRONMENT

       MACHINE   As some manual pages are intended only for specific architectures, 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 environment
                 variable MACHINE to the name of a specific architecture, or with the -S option.
                 MACHINE is case insensitive.

       MANPAGER  Any non-empty value of the environment variable MANPAGER is used instead of the
                 standard pagination program, more(1).  If less(1) is used, the interactive :t
                 command can be used to go to the definitions of various terms, for example
                 command line options, command modifiers, internal commands, environment
                 variables, function names, preprocessor macros, errno(2) values, and some other
                 emphasized words.  Some terms may have defining text at more than one place.  In
                 that case, the less(1) interactive commands t and T can be used to move to the
                 next and to the previous place providing information about the term last
                 searched for with :t.

       MANPATH   The standard search path used by man may be changed by specifying a path in the
                 MANPATH environment variable.  The format of the path is a colon (‘:’) separated
                 list of directories.  Invalid paths are ignored.  Overridden by -M, ignored if
                 -l is specified.

                 If MANPATH begins with a colon, it is appended to the default list; if it ends
                 with a colon, it is prepended to the default list; or if it contains two
                 adjacent colons, the standard search path is inserted between the colons.  If
                 none of these conditions are met, it overrides the standard search path.

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

FILES

       /etc/man.conf  default man configuration file

EXIT STATUS

       The man utility exits 0 on success, and >0 if an error occurs.  See mandoc(1) for details.

EXAMPLES

       Format a page for pasting extracts into an email message — avoid printing any UTF-8
       characters, reduce the width to ease quoting in replies, and remove markup:

             $ man -T ascii -O width=65 pledge | col -b

       Read a typeset page in a PDF viewer:

             $ MANPAGER=mupdf man -T pdf lpd

SEE ALSO

       apropos(1), col(1), mandoc(1), ul(1), whereis(1), man.conf(5), mdoc(7)

STANDARDS

       The man utility is compliant with the IEEE Std 1003.1-2008 (“POSIX.1”) specification.

       The flags [-aCcfhIKlMmOSsTWw], as well as the environment variables MACHINE, MANPAGER, and
       MANPATH, are extensions to that specification.

HISTORY

       A man command first appeared in Version 3 AT&T UNIX.

       The -w option first appeared in Version 7 AT&T UNIX; -f and -k in 4BSD; -M in 4.3BSD; -a
       in 4.3BSD-Tahoe; -c and -m in 4.3BSD-Reno; -h in 4.3BSD-Net/2; -C in NetBSD 1.0; -s and -S
       in OpenBSD 2.3; and -I, -K, -l, -O, and -W in OpenBSD 5.7.  The -T option first appeared
       in AT&T System III UNIX and was also added in OpenBSD 5.7.