NAME

man − find manual information by keywords; print out a manual page

SYNOPSIS

man −k keyword ... 
man −f file ... 
man [ − ] [ section ] title ... 

DESCRIPTION

Man is a program that accesses information from the on-line version of the HP-UX Reference. It can be asked to provide one-line descriptions of commands specified by name, or to list all commands whose description contains any of a set of keywords. It can also provide on-line access to individual entries and sections of the printed manual.

When given the option −k and a set of keywords, man prints out a one-line synopsis of each manual section whose listing in the table of contents contains that keyword.  The −k option requires that the file /usr/lib/whatis exist.  The /usr/lib/whatis file can be created with catman(1M).

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. 

When neither −k nor −f 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 an arabic section number, for example, 3, which may be followed by a single letter classifier, for example, 3c, indicating a library routine in section 3.  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 any title is longer than 11 characters, man first searches for the full-length title.  If not found, title is truncated to 11 characters to ensure that there will be room for the section. The files in the /usr/man directories are normally installed truncated to 11 characters to work on short filename systems with room allowed for the suffix. 

If the standard output is a teletype, or if the flag − is given, man pipes its output through more(1), with the −s option, to stop after each page. 

Man searches in three directories for the specified manual entry.  First man searches in /usr/man, then in /usr/contrib/man, and finally in /usr/local/man.  Within each of these directories, man searches in the cat*.Z subdirectories, the man*.Z subdirectories, the cat* subdirectories, and the man* subdirectories.  The man*.Z and man* directories contain the nroff(1) source for the entries.  The cat*.Z and cat* directories contain the formatted versions of the entries.  The man*.Z and cat.Z directories contain entries in compressed form and are uncompressed before being processed for printing or display. 

If LANG environment variable is set to any valid language name defined by langid(5), man searches in three additional directories for the manual entry before searching in /usr/man.  First, man searches in /usr/man/$LANG, then in /usr/contrib/man/$LANG, and then in /usr/local/man/$LANG.  Therefore, the native language manual pages will be displayed if they are present and installed properly in the system. 

Man uses the most recent version that it finds in the subdirectories searched.  If the most recent version is in:

man*.Z the entry is uncompressed, formatted, and displayed. If the cat*.Z directory exists, the formatted entry is compressed and installed in cat*.Z.  If the cat* directory exists, the formatted entry is installed in cat*. 

cat*.Z the entry is uncompressed and displayed. 

man* the entry is formatted, and displayed.  If the cat*.Z directory exists, it is compressed, and installed in cat*.Z.  If the cat* directory exists, the formatted entry is installed in cat*. 

cat* the entry is displayed. 

If only the cat* or cat*.Z subdirectory is present and/or nroff(1) is not installed, only those pages that have already been formatted are displayable.

If you choose to have the formatted entries on your system, run catman(1M) with the default, which creates the cat*.Z directories (after removing any cat* directories that exist on your system) and also creates the file /usr/lib/whatis used by the man −k option.  If you choose to have the cat* directories, it would be space-saving to remove any cat*.Z directories that may exist on your system.  Beware that man will update both directories (cat* and cat*.Z) if they both exist. 

Special Manual Entries

Some situations may require creation of manual entries for local use or distribution by third-party software suppliers.  The manual formatting macros have been structured to redefine page footers so that manual entries not originating from Hewlett-Packard Company do not show the HP name in the footer, unlike previous releases.  For more information about this change and a description of the manual formatting macros used with nroff or troff, see man(5).

EXAMPLES

The following command lists the manual page entries that contain the word grep in their respective NAME lines. 

man -k grep

The following is printed after the above command is entered:

grep, egrep, fgrep (1) − search a pattern

The following prints the entire manual page for grep(1):

man grep

FILES

/usr/lib/whatis keyword database

/usr/man/cat*[.Z]/∗ formatted manual pages [compressed]

/usr/man/man*[.Z]/∗ raw (nroff(1) source) manual pages [compressed]

/usr/contrib/man/cat*[.Z]/∗

/usr/contrib/man/man*[.Z]/∗

/usr/local/man/cat*[.Z]/∗

/usr/local/man/man*[.Z]/∗

/usr/man/$LANG/cat*[.Z]/∗ formatted native language manual pages [compressed]

/usr/man/$LANG/man*[.Z]/∗ raw (nroff(1) source) native language manual pages [compressed]

/usr/contrib/man/$LANG/cat*[.Z]/∗

/usr/contrib/man/$LANG/man*[.Z]/∗

/usr/local/man/$LANG/cat*[.Z]/∗

/usr/local/man/$LANG/man*[.Z]/∗

SEE ALSO

catman(1M), col(1), compress(1), fixman(1), more(1), col(1), man(5). 

WARNINGS

Manual entries are structured such that they can be printed on a phototypesetter or conventional line printer and screen display devices.  However, due to line printer and display device limitations, some information may be lost. 

EXTERNAL INFLUENCES

Environment Variables

LANG determines the language in which messages are displayed.  LANG is also used to determine the search path (as described above). 

If LANG is not specified or is set to the empty string, a default of "C" (see lang(5)) is used instead of LANG. 

If any internationalization variable contains an invalid setting, man behaves as if all internationalization variables are set to "C".  See environ(5).

International Code Set Support

Single- and multi-byte character code sets are supported. 
 

Hewlett-Packard Company  —  HP-UX Release 7.0: Sept 1989