man - Interface to System Reference Manuals

MAN(1) Manual pager utils MAN(1) NAME man - an interface to the system reference manuals SYNOPSIS man [man options] [[section] page ...] ... man -k [apropos options] regexp ... man -K [man options] [section] term ... man -f [whatis options] page ... man -l [man options] file ... man -w|-W [man options] page ... DESCRIPTION man is the system’s manual pager. Each page argument given to man is normally the name of a program, utility or function. The manual page associated with each of these arguments is then found and displayed. A sec‐ tion, if provided, will direct man to look only in that section of the manual. The default action is to search in all of the available sections following a pre‐defined order (see DEFAULTS), and to show only the first page found, even if page exists in several sections. The table below shows the section numbers of the manual followed by the types of pages they contain. 1 Executable programs or shell commands 2 System calls (functions provided by the kernel) 3 Library calls (functions within program libraries) 4 Special files (usually found in /dev) 5 File formats and conventions, e.g. /etc/passwd 6 Games 7 Miscellaneous (including macro packages and conventions), e.g. man(7), groff(7), man-pages(7) 8 System administration commands (usually only for root) 9 Kernel routines [Non standard] A manual page consists of several sections. Conventional section names include NAME, SYNOPSIS, CONFIGURATION, DESCRIPTION, OPTIONS, EXIT STATUS, RETURN VALUE, ERRORS, ENVIRONMENT, FILES, VERSIONS, CONFORMING TO, NOTES, BUGS, EXAMPLE, AUTHORS, and SEE ALSO. The following conventions apply to the SYNOPSIS section and can be used as a guide in other sections. bold text type exactly as shown. italic text replace with appropriate argument. [-abc] any or all arguments within [ ] are optional. -a|-b options delimited by | cannot be used together. argument ... argument is repeatable. [expression] ... entire expression within [ ] is repeatable. Exact rendering may vary depending on the output device. For instance, man will usually not be able to render italics when running in a terminal, and will typically use underlined or coloured text instead. The command or function illustration is a pattern that should match all possible invocations. In some cases it is advisable to illustrate several exclusive invocations as is shown in the SYNOPSIS section of this man‐ ual page. EXAMPLES man ls Display the manual page for the item (program) ls. man man.7 Display the manual page for macro package man from section 7. (This is an alternative spelling of "man 7 man".) man ’man(7)’ Display the manual page for macro package man from section 7. (This is another alternative spelling of "man 7 man". It may be more convenient when copying and pasting cross‐references to manual pages. Note that the parentheses must normally be quoted to protect them from the shell.) man -a intro Display, in succession, all of the available intro manual pages contained within the manual. It is possible to quit between successive displays or skip any of them. man -t bash | lpr -Pps Format the manual page for bash into the default troff or groff format and pipe it to the printer named ps. The default output for groff is usually PostScript. man --help should advise as to which processor is bound to the -t option. man -l -Tdvi ./foo.1x.gz > ./foo.1x.dvi

The `man` command is the system's manual pager, used to display the reference manuals for programs, utilities, and functions. It searches for and displays manual pages based on the given name and optional section number. The document outlines the syntax, section numbers, conventions used in manual pages, and provides examples of how to use the `man` command.