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When given the option -t and the title of a manual page, man prints the specified man page on the default printer. The default troff command used with the -t option is ptroff, which formats the output for printing on a PostScript printer. A different formatter can be specified with the `TROFF' environment variable.
When given the option -k and a set of keywords, man prints out a one line synopsis of each manual sections whose listing in the table of contents contains one of those keywords.
When given the option -f and a list of file names, man attempts to locate manual sections related to those files, printing out the table of contents lines for those sections.
If none of these options is specified, man formats a specified set of manual pages. If a section specifier is given, man looks in that section of the manual for the given titles. Section is either an Arabic section number (3 for instance), or one of the words ``new,'' ``local,'' ``old,'' or ``public.'' A section number may be followed by a single letter classifier (for instance, 1g, indicating a graphics program in section 1). If section is omitted, man searches all sections of the manual, giving preference to commands over subroutines in system libraries, and printing the first section it finds, if any.
If the standard output is a teletype, or if the flag - is given, man pipes its output through more.1 with the option -s to crush out useless blank lines and to stop after each page on the screen. Hit a space to continue, a control-D to scroll 11 more lines when the output stops. A different pager for viewing man pages (for example, the less.1 pager) can be specified with the `MANPAGER' environment variable.
Normally man checks in a standard location for manual information (/usr/man). This can be changed by supplying a search path with the -M flag. The search path is a colon (`:') separated list of directories in which manual subdirectories may be found; e.g. ``/usr/local:/usr/man''. If the environment variable `MANPATH' is set, its value is used for the default path. If a search path is supplied with the -k or -f options, it must be specified first.
Man will look for the manual page in either of two forms, the nroff source or preformatted pages. If either version is available, the manual page will be displayed. If the preformatted version is available, and it has a more recent modify time than the nroff source, it will be promptly displayed. Otherwise, the manual page will be formatted with nroff and displayed. If the user has permission, the formatted manual page will be deposited in the proper place, so that later invocations of man will not need to format the page again.
/usr/man standard manual area /usr/man/man?/* directories containing source for manuals /usr/man/cat?/* directories containing preformatted pages /usr/man/whatis keyword database
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Created by unroff & hp-tools. © somebody (See intro for details). All Rights Reserved. Last modified 11/5/97