setgid to group "write" so that terminals need not be world writable

[unix-history] / usr / src / usr.bin / man / man.1

.\" Copyright (c) 1980 Regents of the University of California.
.\" All rights reserved.  The Berkeley software License Agreement
.\" specifies the terms and conditions for redistribution.
.\"
.\"	@(#)man.1	6.2 (Berkeley) %G%
.\"
.TH MAN 1 ""
.UC 4
.SH NAME
man \- find manual information by keywords; print out the manual
.SH SYNOPSIS
.br
.B man
[
.B \-
] [
.B \-t
] [
.B \-M
.I path
] [
section
]
title ...
.br
.B man
.B \-k
keyword ...
.br
.B man
.B \-f
file ...
.SH DESCRIPTION
.I Man
is a program which gives information from the programmers manual.
It can be asked for one line descriptions of commands specified by
name, or for all commands whose description contains any of a set of
keywords.  It can also provide on-line access to the sections of the
printed manual.
.PP
When given the option
.B \-k
and a set of keywords,
.I man
prints out a one line synopsis of each manual sections whose
listing in the table of contents contains one of those keywords.
.PP
When given the option
.B \-f
and a list of file names, \fIman\fR attempts to locate manual
sections related to those files, printing out the table of contents
lines for those sections.
.PP
When neither
.B \-k
nor
.B \-f
is specified,
.I man
formats a specified set of manual pages.
If a section specifier is given
.I man
looks in the that section of the manual for the given
.I titles.
.I Section
is either
an Arabic section number (3 for instance), or one of the words ``new,''
``local,'' ``old,'' or ``public.''
A section number may followed by
a single letter classifier (for instance, 1g,
indicating a graphics program in section 1).  If
.I section
is omitted,
.I man
searches all sections of the manual, giving preference to commands
over subroutines in system libraries, and printing the first section
it finds, if any.
.PP
If the standard output is a teletype, or if the flag
.B \-
is given,
.I man
pipes its output through
.IR more (1)
with the option
.B \-s
to crush out useless blank lines
and to stop after each page on the screen.
Hit a space to continue,
a control-D to scroll 11 more lines when the output stops.
.PP
The
.B \-t
flag causes
.I man
to arrange for the specified section to be
.I troff'ed
to a suitable raster output device; see
.IR vtroff (1).
.PP
Normally
.I man
checks in a standard location for manual
information (/usr/man).  This can be changed by supplying a search
path (a la the shell) with the
.B \-M
flag.  The search path is a colon (`:') separated list
of directories in which manual subdirectories may be found;
e.g. ``/usr/local:/usr/man''.  If a search path is supplied
with the 
.B \-k
or
.B \-f
options, it must be specified first.
.PP
.I Man
will look for the manual page in either of two forms, the nroff source or
preformatted pages.
If either version is available, the manual page will be displayed.
If the preformatted version is available, and it has a more recent modify
time than the nroff source,  it will be promptly displayed.
Otherwise, the manual page will be formatted with nroff and displayed.
If the user has permission, the formatted manual page will be deposited
in the proper place, so that later invocations of man will not need to
format the page again.
.SH FILES
.nf
.ta \w'/usr/man/man?/*   'u
/usr/man	standard manual area
/usr/man/man?/*	directories containing source for manuals
/usr/man/cat?/*	directories containing preformatted pages
/usr/man/whatis	keyword database
.fi
.SH SEE\ ALSO
apropos(1), more(1), whereis(1), catman(8)
.SH BUGS
The manual is supposed to be reproducible either on the phototypesetter
or on a typewriter.
However, on a typewriter some information is necessarily lost.