.\" Copyright (c) 1980 Regents of the University of California.
.\" All rights reserved. The Berkeley software License Agreement
.\" specifies the terms and conditions for redistribution.
.\" @(#)catman.8 6.5 (Berkeley) %G%
catman \- create the cat files for the manual
creates the preformatted versions of the on-line manual from the nroff
Each manual page is examined and those whose preformatted versions are
missing or out of date are recreated.
If there is one parameter not starting with a `\-',
it is taken to be a list of manual sections to look in.
will cause the updating to only happen to manual sections
prevents creations of the
prints what would be done instead of doing it.
No manual reformatting is done.
updates manual pages located in the set of directories specified by
has the form of a colon (`:') separated list of directory names,
for example `/usr/local/man:/usr/man'.
If the environment variable `MANPATH' is set,
its value is used for the default path.
If the nroff source file contains only a line of the form `.so manx/yyy.x',
a symbolic link is made in the catx directory to the appropriate
preformatted manual page.
This feature allows easy distribution of the preformatted manual pages
among a group of associated machines with
The nroff sources need not be distributed to all machines,
thus saving the associated disk space.
As an example, consider a local network with 5 machines,
called mach1 through mach5.
Suppose mach3 has the manual page nroff sources.
with a distfile that looks like:
MANSLAVES = ( mach1 mach2 mach4 mach5 )
MANUALS = (/usr/man/cat[1-8no] /usr/man/whatis)
${MANUALS} -> ${MANSLAVES}
.ta \w'/usr/lib/makewhatis 'u
/usr/man default manual directory location
/usr/man/man?/*.* raw (nroff input) manual sections
/usr/man/cat?/*.* preformatted manual pages
/usr/man/whatis whatis database
/usr/lib/makewhatis command script to make whatis database
man(1), cron(8), rdist(1)
Acts oddly on nights with full moons.