man(1) MPE/iX Shell and Utilities man(1)
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NAME
man -- print sections of the online reference manual
SYNOPSIS
man [-wx] [-M path] [section] entry ...
man [-kwx] [-M path] keyword ...
DESCRIPTION
The man command either prints portions of the online manual to
the standard output or searches for manual entries having the
specified keywords associated with them.
man recognizes the following options:
-k searches a precomputed database of synopsis lines for infor-
mation on keywords.
-M path
searches the directories indicated by path for manual
entries. If -M is not specified, man uses the path speci-
fied in the MANPATH environment variable if set; otherwise
man searches /usr/man. All manual entries are found by
searching similarly structured file trees rooted at one or
more places. See the FILES section for a description of what
files and directories man should find in each directory that
it searches.
-w only displays the file name of the file containing the man-
ual entry.
-x displays what files man is searching to find the manual
entry.
section
is a number (0-9) representing a section of the manual. man
will search within the specified section for entry.
Normally, man displays each specified entry of the manual. You
can instruct man to only search a given section of the manual by
specifying the section number on the command line. The online
reference manual for MPE/iX Shell and Utilities contains five
basic sections:
1. Commands
2. System Interface Calls
3. C Runtime Library
4. File Formats
5. Miscellaneous Information
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To find a given entry, man follows these search rules. If you
specified a section, man searches for the appropriate entry in
that section of the manual; otherwise man looks for the first
entry named entry regardless of the section. If any rule results
in finding the man page, man displays the entry and exits.
* man checks each directory in MANPATH for a file named man.dbz.
If it exists, man looks for the requested entry in its index
(see File Format).
* For each possible section (that is, section if you specified
it, or all sections in order from 1 through 9, then 0 if you
did not):
*
man checks each directory in MANPATH for a file named
catn/entry.n, where n is the section number. If it exists,
man checks to see if it was compressed with pack or
compress, and uncompresses it (calling pcat if the file was
packed.)
*
man checks each directory in MANPATH for a file named
mann/entry.n. This is the unformatted manual entry. It is
assumed to be in troff format.
If output is to the terminal, then man invokes a pager command to
filter and display the manual pages. If MANPAGER is defined, it
is used. If not, then if PAGER is defined, it is used; other-
wise, man defaults to using the command:
more -A -s
File Format
The manual files are normally kept in a single large file, called
man.dbz. The file starts with a magic text string:
!<man database compressed>\n
and continues with the index:
14 bytes formatted man page name
9 bytes seek pointer
9 bytes length
The name is simply the entry name, followed by dot and the sec-
tion number, for example, this man page would be named man.1.
When man finds a matching entry, it then seeks to the point in
the file specified by the given seek pointer, and uncompresses
for length bytes. Each manual entry is compressed separately.
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EXAMPLES
In order to find out which utilities do comparisons, it might be
useful to type:
man -k compare
ENVIRONMENT VARIABLES
The following environment variables affect man:
MANPATH
contains a list of paths to search for man pages.
MANPAGER
PAGER
contains an output filtering command for use when displaying
manual entries on a terminal.
TMPDIR
identifies the directory where temporary files reside.
FILES
man uses the following files and directories:
/usr/man
default directory for online manual
cat[0-9]/*.[0-9]
subdirectories containing pre-formatted manual entries in
normal, compressed, or packed form.
man[0-9]/*.[0-9]
unformatted manual entries.
whatis
database used by -k option.
man.dbz
master file containing all manual entries.
DIAGNOSTICS
Possible exit status values are:
0 Successful completion.
1 An error occurred.
Messages
Message: child process creation: system error
Cause: See syserror(3).
Action: See syserror(3).
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Message: execute "filename": system error
Cause: See syserror(3).
Action: See syserror(3).
Message: insufficient memory: system error
Cause: See syserror(3).
Action: See syserror(3).
Message: keyword: nothing appropriate
Cause: man found no entries for the specified keyword in the
whatis database.
Action: Check that you spelled keyword correctly. Try a
related keyword.
Message: Missing path after -M
Cause: You specified the -M option but did not provide a path
as an argument.
Action: Provide the missing path.
Message: No entry for "entry" in section sec of the manual.
Cause: man found no man page for entry in the specified sec-
tion of the manual.
Action: Check that you spelled entry correctly, that you speci-
fied the correct section of the manual, and that the
man command will search the path containing its man
page.
Message: No manual entry for "entry".
Cause: man found no man page for entry in any section of the
manual.
Action: Check that you spelled entry correctly, and that man
command searches the path containing its man page.
Message: no pipes available: system error
Cause: See syserror(3).
Action: See syserror(3).
Message: system call failed: system error
Cause: See syserror(3).
Action: See syserror(3).
Message: Unknown option "-option"
Cause: You specified an option that is not valid for man.
Action: Check the DESCRIPTION section for a list of valid man
options.
Since man calls uncompress to decompress the man.dbz file, it is
also possible to receive an uncompress error. See the
uncompress(1) man page for more information.
PORTABILITY
POSIX.2. x/OPEN Portability Guide 4.0. All UNIX systems.
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The elements of the environment variable MANPATH are separated by
colons.
The -M option, the -x option, the -w option, the MANPAGER envi-
ronment variable, the default pager, and the ability to specify
section on the command line are all extensions to the POSIX stan-
dard.
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