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8 Display online manuals

8.1 man options

The man program supports the following options.

`-a'
`--all'
Display all of the manual pages for a specified section and name combination. Normally, only the first manual page found is displayed.
`-C'
`--config=FILE'
Use the specified file instead of the default configuration file. This permits users to configure their own manual environment. See the Configuration chapter for a description of the contents of this file.
`-c'
`--cat'
Copy the manual page to the standard output instead of using the default pager to paginate it. This is done by default if the standard output is not a terminal device.
`-h'
`--header'
Display only the `SYNOPSIS' lines of the requested manual pages.
`-M'
`--manpath=LIST'
Override the list of standard directories which man searches for manual 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=LIST'
Augment the list of standard directories which man searches for manual 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.
`-u'
`--update'
Forces man to update the formatted manual page if either no formatted page exists, or if the corresponding unformatted page is newer. If this option is used, there is no need to run the catman.pl perl script.
`-w'
`--where'
List the pathnames of the manual pages which man would display for the specified section and name combination.

8.2 man invocation

Synopsis:

man [OPTIONS]... [SECTION] [KEYWORD]...
man 5 man.conf

Show the man.conf manual page from section 5.

man -k chown

Print out all one-line summaries matching chown from the whatis database.

man -M /usr/man ls

Show the man page for ls located in /usr/man.


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