Provided by: mandoc_1.14.6-1_amd64 
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 less(1)
to paginate the output, just like man(1) would.
-c Copy the formatted manual pages to the standard output without using less(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’. This markup is typically converted to
appropriate terminal sequences by the pager or ul(1). To remove the markup, pipe the
output to col(1) -b instead.
The special characters documented in mandoc_char(7) are rendered best-effort in an ASCII
equivalent. In particular, opening and closing ‘single quotes’ are represented as
characters number 0x60 and 0x27, respectively, which agrees with all ASCII standards from
1965 to the latest revision (2012) and which matches the traditional way in which roff(7)
formatters represent single quotes in ASCII output. This correct ASCII rendering may look
strange with modern Unicode-compatible fonts because contrary to ASCII, Unicode uses the
code point U+0060 for the grave accent only, never for an opening quote.
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. This prints the operating
system name rather than the page title on the right side of the footer line, 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.
tag[=term]
If the formatted manual page is opened in a pager, go to the definition of the
term rather than showing the manual page from the beginning. If no term is
specified, reuse the first command line argument that is not a section number. If
that argument is in apropos(1) key=val format, only the val is used rather than
the argument as a whole. This is useful for commands like ‘man -akO tag
Ic=ulimit’ to search for a keyword and jump right to its definition in the
matching manual pages.
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 file /usr/share/misc/mandoc.css 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[;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. If
two formats are given and a file %N.%S exists in the current directory, the first
format is used; otherwise, the second format is used.
style=style.css
The file style.css is used for an external style-sheet. This must be a valid
absolute or relative URI.
tag[=term]
Same syntax and semantics as for ASCII Output. This is implemented by passing a
file:// URI ending in a fragment identifier to the pager rather than passing
merely a file name. When using this argument, use a pager supporting such URIs,
for example
MANPAGER='lynx -force_html' man -T html -O tag=MANPAGER man
MANPAGER='w3m -T text/html' man -T html -O tag=toc mandoc
Consequently, for HTML output, this argument does not work with more(1) or
less(1). For example, ‘MANPAGER=less man -T html -O tag=toc mandoc’ does not work
because less(1) does not support file:// URIs.
toc If an input file contains at least two non-standard sections, print a table of
contents near the beginning of the output.
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. Embedded eqn(7)
and tbl(7) code is not supported.
If the input format of a file is man(7), the input is copied to the output. 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, less(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, less(1) 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 may 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 /usr/share/misc/mandoc.css as the style-sheet:
$ mandoc -T html -O style=/usr/share/misc/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 arguments (os)
The first three fields identify the file name, line number, and column number of the input
file where the message was triggered. The line and column numbers start at 1. Both are
omitted for messages referring to an input file as a whole. All level and message strings
are explained below. The name of the macro triggering the message and its 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:
syserr An operating system error occurred. There isn't necessarily anything wrong with
the input files. Output may all the same be missing or incomplete.
badarg Invalid command line arguments were specified. No input files have been read and
no output is produced.
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 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.
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.
referenced manual not found
(mdoc) An Xr macro references a manual page that was not found. When running with -W
base, the search is restricted to the base system, by default to
/usr/share/man:/usr/X11R6/man. This path can be configured at compile time using the
MANPATH_BASE preprocessor macro. When running with -W style, the search is done along the
full search path as described in the man(1) manual page, respecting the -m and -M command
line options, the MANPATH environment variable, the man.conf(5) file and falling back to
the default of /usr/share/man:/usr/X11R6/man:/usr/local/man, also configurable at compile
time using the MANPATH_DEFAULT preprocessor macro.
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.
input text line longer than 80 bytes
Consider breaking the input text line at one of the blank characters before column 80.
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.
filename/section mismatch
(mdoc, man) The name of the input file being processed is known and its file name
extension starts with a non-zero digit, but the Dt or TH macro contains a section argument
that starts with a different non-zero digit. The section argument is used as provided
anyway. Consider checking whether the file name or the argument need a correction.
missing date, using ""
(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.
argument contains two font escapes
(roff) The second argument of a char request contains more than one font escape sequence.
A wrong font may remain active after using the character.
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 formatted like sp requests. To
request a paragraph break, use Pp instead of a blank line.
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, the argument is of an invalid form, or it is a character escape
sequence with an invalid name. 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 escape, printing literally
(roff) In an escape sequence, the first character right after the leading backslash is
invalid. That character is printed literally, which is equivalent to ignoring the
backslash.
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.
ignoring excessive spacing in tbl layout
(tbl) A spacing modifier in a table layout is unreasonably large. The default spacing of
3n is used instead.
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 request outside macro
(roff) A shift or return request occurs outside any macro definition and has no effect.
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.
using macro argument outside macro
(roff) The escape sequence \$ occurs outside any macro definition and expands to the empty
string.
argument number is not numeric
(roff) The argument of the escape sequence \$ is not a digit; the escape sequence expands
to the empty string.
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.
argument is not a character
(roff) The first argument of a char request is neither a single ASCII character nor a
single character escape sequence. The request is ignored including all its arguments.
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.
excessive shift
(roff) The argument of a shift request is larger than the number of arguments of the macro
that is currently being executed. All macro arguments are deleted and \n(.$ is set to
zero.
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 escape sequence
(roff) An input file contains an escape sequence supported by GNU troff or Heirloom troff
but not by mandoc, and it is likely that this will cause information loss or considerable
misformatting.
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.
skipping tbl in -Tman mode
(mdoc, tbl) An input file contains the TS macro. This message is only generated in -T man
output mode, where tbl(7) input is not supported.
skipping eqn in -Tman mode
(mdoc, eqn) An input file contains the EQ macro. This message is only generated in -T man
output mode, where eqn(7) input is not supported.
Bad command line arguments
bad command line argument
The argument following one of the -IKMmOTW command line options is invalid, or a file
given as a command line argument cannot be opened.
duplicate command line argument
The -I command line option was specified twice.
option has a superfluous value
An argument to the -O option has a value but does not accept one.
missing option value
An argument to the -O option has no argument but requires one.
bad option value
An argument to the -O indent or width option has an invalid value.
duplicate option value
The same -O option is specified more than once.
no such tag
The -O tag option was specified but the tag was not found in any of the displayed manual
pages.
-Tmarkdown unsupported for man(7) input
(man) The -T markdown option was specified but an input file uses the man(7) language. No
output is produced for that input file.
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>.