Man Command (Manual Pages)
Introduction
The man command displays reference manual pages. To see a manual page, type:
man <command>
Example: man ls
Using Keywords or apropos
If you are not sure what the name of a command is, type:
man -k <keyword>
For example, if you wanted to print out a document, but you didn't know that the command to print was lpr, you could type:
man -k print
This example would display a list of all the commands related to printing with a short description of each command.
Another way of using keywords to find a command is by using the apropos command. apropos is the same as
using man with the -k option.
To use apropos, type:
apropos command
Example: apropos finger
This will display all of the commands for which the man page contains finger in the NAME
line.
Specifying Man Pages
The man pages are generally divided up into approximately nine sections:
1 Commands and application programs.
1m Commands for system maintenance.
2 System calls and error numbers.
3 Functions and libraries.
3m Mathematical library functions and constants.
3f FORTRAN library functions and subroutines.
4 File formats.
5 Descriptions of publicly available files and miscellaneous information pages.
6 Computer games and demonstrations.
7 Special files that refer to specific hardware peripherals and device drivers.
9 Device driver interfaces.
Sometimes commands with the same name fall into several different categories resulting in several different man pages with the same title name. For example, there are three different time commands located in three different sections:
time (1) - time a command
time (2)- get time
time (3)- return system time
To see all the sections where a command exists, type:
man -a <command>
Example: man -a ispell
By default, the first man page found in the search path will be displayed, with the others following in the order in which they are found. To view a man page other than the first one found, you can specify the section by typing:
man -s <section> <command>
Example: man -s 2 time
Sometimes, several commands with the same name fall into the same category, resulting in several different man pages with the same name.
For example, two different help command exists in the same section, but they perform very different functions:
help (1) -M /usr/usc/man
help (1) -M /usr/man
By default, the first man page found in the search path will be displayed. To view a man page other that the first one found, you can specify the path by typing:
man -M <path> <command>
Example: man -M /usr/man help
Printing Man Pages
To print out the man pages of a UNIX command, you can do the following:
man <command> | lpr -P<printer>
Example: man rm | lpr -Pps_ucc101
Last updated:
February 03, 2011