minix/man/man1/man.1

.TH MAN 1
.SH NAME
man \- display online manual pages
.SH SYNOPSIS
.B man
.RB [ \-antkfq ]
.RB [ \-M
.IR path ]
.RB [ \-s
.IR section ]
.IR title " ..."
.SH DESCRIPTION
.B Man
displays the online manual pages for the specified titles in the specified
sections.  The sections are as follows:
.PP
.TP
.B 1
User Commands
.br
Generic commands such as
.BR ls ,
.BR cp ,
.BR grep .
.TP
.B 2
System Calls
.br
Low level routines that directly interface with the kernel.
.TP
.B 3
Library Routines
.br
Higher level C language subroutines.
.TP
.B 4
Device Files
.br
Describes devices in
.BR /dev .
.TP
.B 5
File Formats
.br
Formats of files handled by various utilities and subroutines.
.TP
.B 6
Games
.br
It's not \s-2UNIX\s+2 without an adventure game.
.TP
.B 7
Miscellaneous
.br
Macro packages, miscellaneous tidbits.
.TP
.B 8
System Utilities
.br
Commands for the System Administrator.
.TP
.B 9
Documents
.br
Larger manuals explaining some commands in more detail.
.PP
(If you are new to MINIX 3 then try
.BR "man hier" ,
it will show you around the file system and give you many pointers to other
manual pages.)
.PP
By default,
.B man
will try the following files in a manual page directory for the command
.BR "man \-s 1 ls" :
.PP
.RS
.ft B
.nf
cat1/ls.1
cat1/ls.1.Z
man1/ls.1
man1/ls.1.Z
.fi
.ft P
.RE
.PP
Files in the man[1\-8] directories are formatted with
.BR "nroff \-man" .
Those in man9 are formatted with
.BR "nroff \-mnx" .
Files in the cat? directories are preformatted.  Files with names ending in
.B .Z
are decompressed first with
.B zcat
(see
.BR compress (1)).
The end result is presented to the user using a pager if displaying on
the screen.
.PP
For each manual page directory in its search path,
.B man
will first try all the subdirectories of the manual page directory for
the files above, and then the directory itself.  The directory
.B /usr/man
contains the standard manual pages, with manual pages for optional
packages installed in a subdirectory of /usr/man, with the same
structure as /usr/man.  The directory
.B /usr/local/man
contains manual pages for locally added software.  By default
/usr/local/man is searched first, then /usr/man.
.PP
A title is not simply used as a filename, because several titles may
refer to the same manual page.  Each manual page directory contains a
database of titles in the
.BR whatis (5)
file that is created by
.BR makewhatis (1)
from the NAME sections of all the manual pages.  A title is searched in
this database and the first title on a whatis line is used as a filename.
.SH OPTIONS
The options may be interspersed with the titles to search, and take effect
for the titles after them.
.TP
.B \-a
Show all the manual pages or one line descriptions with the given title in
all the specified sections in all the manual directories in the search path.
Normally only the first page found is shown.
.TP
.B \-n
Use
.B nroff \-man
to format manual pages (default).
.TP
.B \-t
Use
.B troff \-man
to format manual pages.
.TP
.B \-f
Use
.BR whatis (1)
to show a one line description of the title from the
.BR whatis (5)
file.
.TP
.B \-k
Use
.BR apropos (1)
to show all the one line descriptions of the title anywhere in the
.BR whatis (5)
files (implies
.BR \-a ).
.TP
.B \-q
Quietly check if all requested manual pages exist.  No output, no errors,
just an exit code.
.TP
.BI \-M " path"
Use
.I path
as the search path for manual directories.
.TP
.BI \-s " section"
.I Section
is the section number the page is to be found in, or a comma separated
list of sections to use.  Normally all sections are searched.  The
search is always in numerical order no matter what your section list looks
like.  A single digit is treated as a section number without the
.B \-s
for compatibility with BSD-style
.B man
commands.
.SH ENVIRONMENT
.TP 15n
.B MANPATH
This is a colon separated list of directories to search for manual
pages, by default
.BR /usr/local/man:/usr/man .
.TP
.B PAGER
The program to use to display the manual page or one line descriptions on
the screen page by page.  By default
.BR more .
.SH FILES
.TP 25n
/usr/man/whatis
One of the
.BR whatis (5)
databases.
.SH "SEE ALSO"
.BR nroff (1),
.BR troff (1),
.BR more (1),
.BR whatis (1),
.BR makewhatis (1),
.BR catman (1),
.BR whatis (5),
.BR man (7).
.SH AUTHOR
Kees J. Bot (kjb@cs.vu.nl)