NAME
    man - format and display the on-line manual pages
    manpath - determine user's search path for man pages

SYNOPSIS
    man [-acdfFhkKtwW] [--path] [-m system] [-p string] [-C config_file]
    [-M pathlist] [-P pager] [-S section_list] [section] name ...

DESCRIPTION
    man formats and displays the on-line manual pages. If you specify sec-
    tion, man only looks in that section of the manual. name is normally
    the name of the manual page, which is typically the name of a command,
    function, or file.  However, if name contains a slash (/) then man
    interprets it as a file specification, so that you can do man ./foo.5
    or even man /cd/foo/bar.1.gz.

    See below for a description of where man looks for the manual page
    files.

OPTIONS
    -C config_file
    Specify the configuration file  to use;  the  default  is
    /etc/man.config. (See man.conf(5).)

    -M path
    Specify the list of directories to search for man pages.  Sepa-
    rate the directories with colons.  An empty list is the same as
    not specifying -M at all.  See SEARCH PATH FOR MANUAL PAGES.

    -P pager
    Specify which pager to use. This option overrides the MANPAGER
    environment variable, which in turn overrides the PAGER  vari-
    able. By default, man uses /usr/bin/less -isr.

    -S section_list
    List is a colon separated list of manual sections to search.
    This option overrides the MANSECT environment variable.

    -a   By default, man will exit after displaying the first manual page
    it finds. Using this option forces man to display all the man-
    ual pages that match name, not just the first.

    -c   Reformat the source man page, even when an up-to-date cat page
    exists. This can be meaningful if the cat page was formatted
    for a screen with a different number of columns, or if the pre-
    formatted page is corrupted.

    -d   Don't actually display the man pages, but do print gobs of
    debugging information.

    -D   Both display and print debugging info.

    -f   Equivalent to whatis.

    -F or --preformat
    Format only - do not display.

    -h   Print a one-line help message and exit.

    -k   Equivalent to apropos.

    -K   Search for the specified string in *all*  man pages. Warning:
    this is probably very slow! It helps to specify a section.
    (Just to give a rough idea, on my machine  this takes about a
    minute per 500 man pages.)

    -m system
    Specify an alternate set of man pages to search based on the
    system name given.

    -p string
    Specify the sequence of preprocessors to run before nroff or
    troff. Not all installations will have a full set of preproces-
    sors. Some of the preprocessors and the letters used to desig-
    nate them are: eqn (e), grap (g), pic (p), tbl (t), vgrind (v),
    refer (r). This option overrides the MANROFFSEQ environment
    variable.

    -t   Use /usr/bin/groff -Tps -mandoc to format the manual page, pass-
    ing the output to stdout.  The output from /usr/bin/groff -Tps
    -mandoc may need to be passed through some filter or another
    before being printed.

    -w or --path
    Don't actually display the man pages, but  do print the  loca-
    tion(s) of the files that would be formatted or displayed. If no
    argument is given: display (on stdout) the list of directories
    that is searched by man for man pages. If manpath is a link to
    man, then "manpath" is equivalent to "man --path".

    -W   Like -w, but print file names one per line, without additional
    information.  This is useful in shell commands like man -aW man
    | xargs ls -l

CAT PAGES
    Man will try to save the formatted man pages, in order to save format-
    ting time the next time these pages are needed. Traditionally, format-
    ted versions of pages in DIR/manX are saved in DIR/catX, but other map-
    pings from man dir to cat dir can be specified in /etc/man.config. No
    cat pages are saved when the required cat directory does not exist. No
    cat pages are saved when they are formatted for a line length different
    from 80.  No cat pages are saved when  man.conf contains the line
    NOCACHE.

    It is possible to make man suid to a user man. Then, if a cat directory
    has owner man and mode 0755 (only writable by man), and the cat  files
    have owner man  and mode 0644 or 0444 (only writable by man, or not
    writable at all), no ordinary user can change the cat pages or put
    other files in the cat directory. If man is not made suid, then a cat
    directory should have mode 0777 if all users should be able to  leave
    cat pages there.

    The option -c forces reformatting a page, even if a recent cat page
    exists.

SEARCH PATH FOR MANUAL PAGES
    man uses a sophisticated method of finding manual page files, based on
    the invocation options and environment variables, the /etc/man.config
    configuration file, and some built in conventions and heuristics.

    First of all, when the name argument to man contains a slash (/), man
    assumes it is a file specification itself, and there is no searching
    involved.

    But in the normal case where name doesn't contain a slash, man searches
    a variety of directories for a file that could be a manual page for the
    topic named.

    If you specify the -M pathlist option, pathlist is a colon-separated
    list of the directories that man searches.

    If you don't specify -M but set the MANPATH environment variable, the
    value of that variable is the  list of the directories that man
    searches.

    If you don't specify an explicit path list with -M or MANPATH, man
    develops its own path list based on the contents of the  configuration
    file /etc/man.config. The MANPATH statements in the configuration file
    identify particular directories to include in the search path.

    Furthermore, the MANPATH_MAP statements add to the search path depend-
    ing on your command search path (i.e. your PATH environment variable).
    For each directory that may be in the command search path, a MAN-
    PATH_MAP  statement specifies a directory that should be added to the
    search path for manual page files. man looks at the PATH variable and
    adds the corresponding directories to the manual page file search path.
    Thus, with the proper use of MANPATH_MAP, when you issue the command
    man xyz, you get a manual page for the program that would run if you
    issued the command xyz.

    In addition, for each directory in the command search path (we'll call
    it a "command directory") for which  you do not have a MANPATH_MAP
    statement, man automatically looks for a manual page directory "nearby"
    namely as a subdirectory in the command directory itself or in the par-
    ent directory of the command directory.

    You can disable the automatic "nearby" searches by including a  NOAU-
    TOPATH statement in /etc/man.config.

    In each  directory in the search path as described above, man searches
    for a file named topic.section, with an optional suffix on the section
    number and possibly a compression suffix. If it doesn't find such a
    file, it then looks in any subdirectories named manN or catN where N is
    the manual section number. If the file is in a catN subdirectory, man
    assumes it is a formatted manual page file (cat page). Otherwise, man
    assumes it is unformatted. In either case, if the filename has a known
    compression suffix (like .gz), man assumes it is gzipped.

    If you want to see where (or if) man would find the manual page for a
    particular topic, use the --path (-w) option.

ENVIRONMENT
    MANPATH
    If MANPATH is set, man uses it as the path to search for manual
    page files. It overrides the configuration file and the  auto-
    matic search path, but  is overridden  by the -M invocation
    option. See SEARCH PATH FOR MANUAL PAGES.

    MANPL If MANPL is set, its value is used as the display  page length.
    Otherwise, the entire man page will occupy one (long) page.

    MANROFFSEQ
    If MANROFFSEQ is set, its value is used to determine the set of
    preprocessors run before running nroff or  troff.  By default,
    pages are passed through the tbl preprocessor before nroff.

    MANSECT
    If MANSECT is set, its value is used to determine which manual
    sections to search.

    MANWIDTH
    If MANWIDTH is set, its value is used as the width manpages
    should be displayed. Otherwise the pages may be displayed over
    the whole width of your screen.

    MANPAGER
    If MANPAGER is set, its value is used as the name of the program
    to use to display the man page. If not, then PAGER is used. If
    that has no value either, /usr/bin/less -isr is used.

    LANG  If LANG is set, its value defines the name of the subdirectory
    where man first looks for man pages. Thus, the command `LANG=dk
    man 1 foo' will cause man to look for the foo  man page in
    .../dk/man1/foo.1, and if it cannot find such a file, then in
    .../man1/foo.1, where ... is a directory on the search path.

    NLSPATH, LC_MESSAGES, LANG
    The environment variables NLSPATH and LC_MESSAGES (or LANG when
    the latter does not exist) play a role in locating the message
    catalog. (But the English messages are compiled  in, and for
    English no catalog is required.) Note that programs like col(1)
    called by man also use e.g. LC_CTYPE.

    PATH  PATH helps determine the search path for manual page files. See
    SEARCH PATH FOR MANUAL PAGES.

    SYSTEM SYSTEM is used to get the default alternate system name (for use
    with the -m option).

SEE ALSO
   apropos(1),whatis(1),less(1),groff(1), man.config(5).

BUGS
    The -t option only works if a troff-like program is installed.
    If you see blinking \255 or <AD> instead of  hyphens, put `LESS-
    CHARSET=latin1' in your environment.

TIPS
    If you add the line

  (global-set-key [(f1)] (lambda () (interactive) (manual-entry (cur-
    rent-word))))

    to your .emacs file, then hitting F1 will give you the man page for the
    library call at the current cursor position.

    To get a plain text version  of a man page, without backspaces and
    underscores, try

  # man foo | col -b > foo.mantxt