usr/src/usr.bin/man/man.1

.\" Copyright (c) 1989 The Regents of the University of California.
.\" All rights reserved.
.\"
.\" Redistribution and use in source and binary forms are permitted
.\" provided that the above copyright notice and this paragraph are
.\" duplicated in all such forms and that any documentation,
.\" advertising materials, and other materials related to such
.\" distribution and use acknowledge that the software was developed
.\" by the University of California, Berkeley.  The name of the
.\" University may not be used to endorse or promote products derived
.\" from this software without specific prior written permission.
.\" THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED ``AS IS'' AND WITHOUT ANY EXPRESS OR
.\" IMPLIED WARRANTIES, INCLUDING, WITHOUT LIMITATION, THE IMPLIED
.\" WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.
.\"
.\"     @(#)man.1       6.9 (Berkeley) %G%
.\"
.TH MAN 1 ""
.UC 4
.SH NAME
man \- display the on-line manual pages
.SH SYNOPSIS
.nf
.ft B
man [ -acw ] [ -M path ] [ -m path ] [ section ] name ...
.ft R
.fi
.SH DESCRIPTION
.I Man
displays the UNIX manual pages entitled
.IR name .
.PP
The options are as follows:
.TP
a
Display all of the manual pages for a specified
.I section
and
.I name
combination.
(Normally, only the first manual page found is displayed.)
.TP
c
Copy the manual page to the standard output instead of using
.IR more (1)
to paginate it.
This is done by default if the standard output is not a terminal device.
.TP
M
Override the list of standard directories which
.I man
searches for manual pages.
The supplied
.I path
must be a colon (``:'') separated list of directories.
This search path may also be set using the environmental variable
.IR MANPATH .
.TP
m
Augment the list of standard directories which
.I man
searches for manual pages.
The supplied
.I path
must be a colon (``:'') separated list of directories.
These directories will be searched before the standard directories or
the directories specified using the
.I M
option or the
.I MANPATH
environmental variable.
.TP
.I w
List the pathnames of the manual pages which
.I man
would display for the specified
.I section
and
.I name
combination.
.PP
The optional
.I section
restricts the directories that
.I man
will search.
The
.I man
configuration file (see
.IR man.conf (5))
specifies the possible
.I section
values that are currently available.
If only a single argument is specified or if the first argument is
not a valid section,
.I man
assumes that the argument is the name of a manual page to be displayed.
.SH "ENVIRONMENTAL VARIABLES"
.TP
MACHINE
As some manual pages are intended only for use on certain architectures,
.I man
searches certain directories applicable to the current machine.
.I Man's
determination of the current machine type may be overridden by setting
the environmental variable MACHINE to the name of an architecture (see
.IR machine (1)).
Machine specific areas are checked before general areas.
.TP
MANPATH
The standard search path used by
.I man
may be overridden by specifying a path in the MANPATH environmental
variable.
The format of the path is a colon (``:'') separated list of directories.
.TP
PAGER
Any value of the environmental variable
.I PAGER
will be used instead of the standard pagination program
.IR more (1).
.SH FILES
/etc/man.config man configuration file
.SH "SEE ALSO"
apropos(1), machine(1), whatis(1), whereis(1), man.conf(5)
.SH BUGS
The on-line manual pages are, by necessity, forgiving toward stupid
display devices, causing some manual pages to not be as good as their
typeset counterparts.