Man Page Options: Output Devices, Help, Exit Status, and Environment Variables

-t. Examples (provided with Groff‐1.17) include dvi, latin1, ps, utf8, X75 and X100. -H[browser], --html[=browser] This option will cause groff to produce HTML output, and will display that output in a web browser. The choice of browser is determined by the optional browser argument if one is provided, by the $BROWSER en‐ vironment variable, or by a compile‐time default if that is unset (usually lynx). This option implies -t, and will only work with GNU troff. -X[dpi], --gxditview[=dpi] This option displays the output of groff in a graphical window using the gxditview program. The dpi (dots per inch) may be 75, 75‐12, 100, or 100‐12, defaulting to 75; the ‐12 variants use a 12‐point base font. This option implies -T with the X75, X75‐12, X100, or X100‐12 device respectively. -Z, --ditroff groff will run troff and then use an appropriate post‐processor to produce output suitable for the chosen device. If groff -mandoc is groff, this option is passed to groff and will suppress the use of a post‐ processor. It implies -t. Getting help -?, --help Print a help message and exit. --usage Print a short usage message and exit. -V, --version Display version information. EXIT STATUS 0 Successful program execution. 1 Usage, syntax or configuration file error. 2 Operational error. 3 A child process returned a non‐zero exit status. 16 At least one of the pages/files/keywords didn’t exist or wasn’t matched. ENVIRONMENT MANPATH If $MANPATH is set, its value is used as the path to search for manual pages. See the SEARCH PATH section of manpath(5) for the default behaviour and details of how this environment variable is handled. MANROFFOPT Every time man invokes the formatter (nroff, troff, or groff), it adds the contents of $MANROFFOPT to the formatter’s command line. MANROFFSEQ If $MANROFFSEQ is set, its value is used to determine the set of preprocessors to pass each manual page through. The default preprocessor list is system dependent. MANSECT If $MANSECT is set, its value is a colon‐delimited list of sections and it is used to determine which manual sections to search and in what order. The default is "1 n l 8 3 0 2 3type 3posix 3pm 3perl 3am 5 4 9 6 7", unless overridden by the SECTION directive in /etc/manpath.config. MANPAGER, PAGER If $MANPAGER or $PAGER is set ($MANPAGER is used in preference), its value is used as the name of the program used to display the manual page. By default, pager is used, falling back to cat if pager is not found or is not executable. The value may be a simple command name or a command with arguments, and may use shell quoting (backslashes, single quotes, or double quotes). It may not use pipes to connect multiple commands; if you need that, use a wrapper script, which may take the file to display either as an argument or on standard input. MANLESS If $MANLESS is set, its value will be used as the default prompt string for the less pager, as if it had been passed using the -r option (so any occurrences of the text $MAN_PN will be expanded in the same way). For example, if you want to set the prompt string unconditionally to “my prompt string”, set $MANLESS to ‘-Psmy prompt string’. Using the -r option overrides this environment variable. BROWSER If $BROWSER is set, its value is a colon‐delimited list of commands, each of which in turn is used to try to start a web browser for man --html. In each command, %s is replaced by a filename containing the HTML output from groff,

This section covers additional options for the `man` command, including specifying output devices with `-H`, `-X`, and `-Z`; getting help with `-?`, `--help`, and `--usage`; understanding exit statuses; and using environment variables like `MANPATH`, `MANROFFOPT`, `MANROFFSEQ`, `MANSECT`, `MANPAGER`, `PAGER`, `MANLESS`, and `BROWSER` to customize man page display and behavior.