MAN(1) General Commands Manual MAN(1)
NAME
man, apropos, whatis – display online manual documentation pages
SYNOPSIS
man [-adho] [-t | -w] [-M manpath] [-P pager] [-S mansect]
[-m arch[:machine]] [-p [eprtv]] [mansect] page ...
man -f [-d] [-M manpath] [-P pager] [-S mansect] keyword ...
whatis [-d] [-s mansect] keyword ...
man -k [-d] [-M manpath] [-P pager] [-S mansect] keyword ...
apropos [-d] [-s mansect] keyword ...
DESCRIPTION
The man utility finds and displays online manual documentation pages. If
mansect is provided, man restricts the search to the specific section of
the manual.
The sections of the manual are:
1. General Commands Manual
2. System Calls Manual
3. Library Functions Manual
4. Kernel Interfaces Manual
5. File Formats Manual
6. Games Manual
7. Miscellaneous Information Manual
8. System Manager's Manual
9. Kernel Developer's Manual
Options that man understands:
-M manpath
Forces a specific colon separated manual path instead of the
default search path. See manpath(1). Overrides the MANPATH
environment variable.
-P pager
Use specified pager. Defaults to “less -sR” if color support is
enabled, or “less -s”. Overrides the MANPAGER environment
variable, which in turn overrides the PAGER environment variable.
-S mansect
Restricts manual sections searched to the specified colon
delimited list. Defaults to “1:8:2:3:3lua:n:4:5:6:7:9:l”.
Overrides the MANSECT environment variable.
-a Display all manual pages instead of just the first found for each
page argument.
-d Print extra debugging information. Repeat for increased
verbosity. Does not display the manual page.
-f Emulate whatis(1). Note that only a subset of options will have
any effect when man is invoked in this mode. See the below
description of whatis options for details.
-h Display short help message and exit.
-k Emulate apropos(1). Note that only a subset of options will have
any effect when man is invoked in this mode. See the below
description of apropos options for details.
-m arch[:machine]
Override the default architecture and machine settings allowing
lookup of other platform specific manual pages. This option is
accepted, but not implemented, on macOS.
-o Force use of non-localized manual pages. See IMPLEMENTATION
NOTES for how locale specific searches work. Overrides the
LC_ALL, LC_CTYPE, and LANG environment variables.
-p [eprtv]
Use the list of given preprocessors before running nroff(1) or
troff(1). Valid preprocessors arguments:
e eqn(1)
p pic(1)
r refer(1)
t tbl(1)
v vgrind(1)
Overrides the MANROFFSEQ environment variable.
-t Send manual page source through troff(1) allowing transformation
of the manual pages to other formats.
-w Display the location of the manual page instead of the contents
of the manual page.
Options that apropos and whatis understand:
-d Same as the -d option for man.
-s Same as the -S option for man.
When man is operated in apropos or whatis emulation mode, only a subset
of its options will be honored. Specifically, -d, -M, -P, and -S have
equivalent functionality in the apropos and whatis implementation
provided. The MANPATH, MANSECT, and MANPAGER environment variables will
similarly be honored.
IMPLEMENTATION NOTES
Locale Specific Searches
The man utility supports manual pages in different locales. The search
behavior is dictated by the first of three environment variables with a
nonempty string: LC_ALL, LC_CTYPE, or LANG. If set, man will search for
locale specific manual pages using the following logic:
lang_country.charset
lang.charset
en.charset
For example, if LC_ALL is set to “ja_JP.eucJP”, man will search the
following paths when considering section 1 manual pages in
/usr/share/man:
/usr/share/man/ja_JP.eucJP/man1
/usr/share/man/ja.eucJP/man1
/usr/share/man/en.eucJP/man1
/usr/share/man/man1
Displaying Specific Manual Files
The man utility also supports displaying a specific manual page if passed
a path to the file as long as it contains a ‘/’ character.
ENVIRONMENT
The following environment variables affect the execution of man:
LC_ALL, LC_CTYPE, LANG
Used to find locale specific manual pages. Valid values
can be found by running the locale(1) command. See
IMPLEMENTATION NOTES for details. Influenced by the -o
option.
MACHINE_ARCH, MACHINE
Used to find platform specific manual pages. If unset,
the output of “sysctl hw.machine_arch” and “sysctl
hw.machine” is used respectively. See IMPLEMENTATION
NOTES for details. Corresponds to the -m option.
MANPATH The standard search path used by man(1) may be changed by
specifying a path in the MANPATH environment variable.
Invalid paths, or paths without manual databases, are
ignored. Overridden by -M. If MANPATH begins with a
colon, it is appended to the default list; if it ends
with a colon, it is prepended to the default list; or if
it contains two adjacent colons, the standard search path
is inserted between the colons. If none of these
conditions are met, it overrides the standard search
path.
MANROFFSEQ Used to determine the preprocessors for the manual source
before running nroff(1) or troff(1). If unset, defaults
to tbl(1). Corresponds to the -p option.
MANSECT Restricts manual sections searched to the specified colon
delimited list. Corresponds to the -S option.
MANWIDTH If set to a numeric value, used as the width manpages
should be displayed. Otherwise, if set to a special
value “tty”, and output is to a terminal, the pages may
be displayed over the whole width of the screen.
MANCOLOR If set, enables color support.
MANPAGER Program used to display files.
If unset, and color support is enabled, “less -sR” is
used.
If unset, and color support is disabled, then PAGER is
used. If that has no value either, “less -s” is used.
FILES
/etc/man.conf
System configuration file.
/usr/local/etc/man.d/*.conf
Local configuration files.
EXIT STATUS
The man utility exits 0 on success, and >0 if an error occurs.
EXAMPLES
Show the manual page for stat(2):
$ man 2 stat
Show all manual pages for ‘stat’.
$ man -a stat
List manual pages which match the regular expression either in the title
or in the body:
$ man -k '\<copy\>.*archive'
Show the manual page for ls(1) and use cat(1) as pager:
$ man -P cat ls
Show the location of the ls(1) manual page:
$ man -w ls
SEE ALSO
apropos(1), intro(1), mandoc(1), manpath(1), whatis(1), intro(2),
intro(3), intro(3lua), intro(4), intro(5), man.conf(5), intro(6),
intro(7), mdoc(7), intro(8), intro(9)
macOS 15.2 January 9, 2021 macOS 15.2