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MAN(1)                    BSD General Commands Manual                   MAN(1)

NAME
     man -- display the on-line manual pages (aka "man pages")

SYNOPSIS
     man [-acw|-h] [-C file] [-M path] [-m path] [-S srch] [[-s] section] name
         ...
     man -k [-C file] [-M path] [-m path] keyword ...
     man -p

DESCRIPTION
     The man utility displays the manual pages named on the command line.  Its
     options are as follows:

     -a      Display all of the man pages for a specified section and name
             combination.  (Normally, only the first man page found is
             displayed.)

     -C      Use the specified file instead of the default configuration file.
             This permits users to configure their own man environment.  See
             man.conf(5) for a description of the contents of this file.

     -c      Copy the man page to the standard output instead of using more(1)
             to paginate it.  This is done by default if the standard output
             is not a terminal device.

     -h      Display only the "SYNOPSIS" lines of the requested man pages.
             For commands, this is typically the command line usage
             information.  For library functions, this usually contains the
             required include files and function prototypes.

     -k      Display the header lines for any man pages matching keyword(s),
             in the same manner as apropos(1).

     -M      Override the list of standard directories which man searches for
             man pages.  The supplied path must be a colon (":") separated
             list of directories.  This search path may also be set using the
             environment variable MANPATH.  The subdirectories to be searched,
             and their search order, is specified by the "_subdir" line in the
             man configuration file.

     -m      Augment the list of standard directories which man searches for
             man pages.  The supplied path must be a colon (":") separated
             list of directories.  These directories will be searched before
             the standard directories or the directories specified using the
             -M option or the MANPATH environment variable.  The
             subdirectories to be searched, and their search order, is
             specified by the "_subdir" line in the man configuration file.

     -p      Print the search path for the manual pages.

     -s      Restrict the directories that man will search to the specified
             section.  The man configuration file (see man.conf(5)) specifies
             the possible section values that are currently available.

     -S      Display only man pages that have the specified string in the
             directory part of their filenames.  This allows the man page
             search process criteria to be narrowed without having to change
             the MANPATH or "_default" variables.

     -w      List the pathnames of the man pages which man would display for
             the specified section and name combination.

     If the '-s' option is not specified, there is more than one argument, the
     '-k' option is not used, and the first argument is a valid section, then
     that argument will be used as if specified by the '-s' option.

     If name is given with a full or relative path then man interprets it as a
     file specification, so that you can do man ./foo.5 or even man
     /cd/foo/bar.1.gz.

ENVIRONMENT
     MACHINE   As some man pages are intended only for specific architectures,
               man searches any subdirectories, with the same name as the
               current architecture, in every directory which it searches.
               Machine specific areas are checked before general areas.  The
               current machine type may be overridden by setting the
               environment variable MACHINE to the name of a specific
               architecture.

     MANPATH   The standard search path used by man may be overridden by
               specifying a path in the MANPATH environment variable.  The
               format of the path is a colon (":") separated list of
               directories.  The subdirectories to be searched as well as
               their search order is specified by the "_subdir" line in the
               man configuration file.

     PAGER     The pagination command used for writing the output.  If the
               PAGER environment variable is null or not set, the standard
               pagination program more(1) will be used.

FILES
     /etc/man.conf  default man configuration file.

SEE ALSO
     apropos(1), whatis(1), whereis(1), man.conf(5), mdoc(7), mdoc.samples(7)

STANDARDS
     man conforms to X/Open Commands and Utilities Issue 5 ("XCU5").

BUGS
     The on-line man pages are, by necessity, forgiving toward stupid display
     devices, causing a few man pages to be not as nicely formatted as their
     typeset counterparts.

BSD                             October 7, 2011                            BSD
NAME | SYNOPSIS | DESCRIPTION | ENVIRONMENT | FILES | SEE ALSO | STANDARDS | BUGS