source: trunk/minix/man/man1/man.1@ 15

Last change on this file since 15 was 9, checked in by Mattia Monga, 14 years ago

Minix 3.1.2a

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1.TH MAN 1
2.SH NAME
3man \- display online manual pages
4.SH SYNOPSIS
5.B man
6.RB [ \-antkfq ]
7.RB [ \-M
8.IR path ]
9.RB [ \-s
10.IR section ]
11.IR title " ..."
12.SH DESCRIPTION
13.B Man
14displays the online manual pages for the specified titles in the specified
15sections. The sections are as follows:
16.PP
17.TP
18.B 1
19User Commands
20.br
21Generic commands such as
22.BR ls ,
23.BR cp ,
24.BR grep .
25.TP
26.B 2
27System Calls
28.br
29Low level routines that directly interface with the kernel.
30.TP
31.B 3
32Library Routines
33.br
34Higher level C language subroutines.
35.TP
36.B 4
37Device Files
38.br
39Describes devices in
40.BR /dev .
41.TP
42.B 5
43File Formats
44.br
45Formats of files handled by various utilities and subroutines.
46.TP
47.B 6
48Games
49.br
50It's not \s-2UNIX\s+2 without an adventure game.
51.TP
52.B 7
53Miscellaneous
54.br
55Macro packages, miscellaneous tidbits.
56.TP
57.B 8
58System Utilities
59.br
60Commands for the System Administrator.
61.TP
62.B 9
63Documents
64.br
65Larger manuals explaining some commands in more detail.
66.PP
67(If you are new to MINIX 3 then try
68.BR "man hier" ,
69it will show you around the file system and give you many pointers to other
70manual pages.)
71.PP
72By default,
73.B man
74will try the following files in a manual page directory for the command
75.BR "man \-s 1 ls" :
76.PP
77.RS
78.ft B
79.nf
80cat1/ls.1
81cat1/ls.1.Z
82man1/ls.1
83man1/ls.1.Z
84.fi
85.ft P
86.RE
87.PP
88Files in the man[1\-8] directories are formatted with
89.BR "nroff \-man" .
90Those in man9 are formatted with
91.BR "nroff \-mnx" .
92Files in the cat? directories are preformatted. Files with names ending in
93.B .Z
94are decompressed first with
95.B zcat
96(see
97.BR compress (1)).
98The end result is presented to the user using a pager if displaying on
99the screen.
100.PP
101For each manual page directory in its search path,
102.B man
103will first try all the subdirectories of the manual page directory for
104the files above, and then the directory itself. The directory
105.B /usr/man
106contains the standard manual pages, with manual pages for optional
107packages installed in a subdirectory of /usr/man, with the same
108structure as /usr/man. The directory
109.B /usr/local/man
110contains manual pages for locally added software. By default
111/usr/local/man is searched first, then /usr/man.
112.PP
113A title is not simply used as a filename, because several titles may
114refer to the same manual page. Each manual page directory contains a
115database of titles in the
116.BR whatis (5)
117file that is created by
118.BR makewhatis (1)
119from the NAME sections of all the manual pages. A title is searched in
120this database and the first title on a whatis line is used as a filename.
121.SH OPTIONS
122The options may be interspersed with the titles to search, and take effect
123for the titles after them.
124.TP
125.B \-a
126Show all the manual pages or one line descriptions with the given title in
127all the specified sections in all the manual directories in the search path.
128Normally only the first page found is shown.
129.TP
130.B \-n
131Use
132.B nroff \-man
133to format manual pages (default).
134.TP
135.B \-t
136Use
137.B troff \-man
138to format manual pages.
139.TP
140.B \-f
141Use
142.BR whatis (1)
143to show a one line description of the title from the
144.BR whatis (5)
145file.
146.TP
147.B \-k
148Use
149.BR apropos (1)
150to show all the one line descriptions of the title anywhere in the
151.BR whatis (5)
152files (implies
153.BR \-a ).
154.TP
155.B \-q
156Quietly check if all requested manual pages exist. No output, no errors,
157just an exit code.
158.TP
159.BI \-M " path"
160Use
161.I path
162as the search path for manual directories.
163.TP
164.BI \-s " section"
165.I Section
166is the section number the page is to be found in, or a comma separated
167list of sections to use. Normally all sections are searched. The
168search is always in numerical order no matter what your section list looks
169like. A single digit is treated as a section number without the
170.B \-s
171for compatibility with BSD-style
172.B man
173commands.
174.SH ENVIRONMENT
175.TP 15n
176.B MANPATH
177This is a colon separated list of directories to search for manual
178pages, by default
179.BR /usr/local/man:/usr/man .
180.TP
181.B PAGER
182The program to use to display the manual page or one line descriptions on
183the screen page by page. By default
184.BR more .
185.SH FILES
186.TP 25n
187/usr/man/whatis
188One of the
189.BR whatis (5)
190databases.
191.SH "SEE ALSO"
192.BR nroff (1),
193.BR troff (1),
194.BR more (1),
195.BR whatis (1),
196.BR makewhatis (1),
197.BR catman (1),
198.BR whatis (5),
199.BR man (7).
200.SH AUTHOR
201Kees J. Bot (kjb@cs.vu.nl)
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