Displays manual entries online.
man [ [ [ -c ] [ -t ] [ Section ] ] | [ -k | -f ] ] [ -MPath ] [ -r ] Title ...
The man command provides reference information on topics, such as commands, subroutines, and files. The man command provides one-line descriptions of commands specified by name. The man command also provides information on all commands whose descriptions contain a set of user-specified keywords.
The man command formats a specified set of manual pages. If you specify a section for the Section parameter, the man command searches in that section of the manual pages for the title specified by the Title parameter. The value of the Section parameter can be either an Arabic number from 1 through 8 or a letter.
The Section letters are:
The Section numbers are:
If the Section parameter is omitted, the man command searches all sections of the manual.
The search path the man command uses is a list of directories separated by a : (colon) in which manual subdirectories can be found. The MANPATH environment variable value is used for the default path. The MANPATH environment variable is not valid when reading the hypertext information bases.
The man command displays the manual pages as follows:
When accessing the HTML databases, man looks for the operating system library before it proceeds to other LPP libraries. Within these libraries, it processes information in the following order:
cmds | Commands Reference |
libs | Subroutines, System Calls |
files | Files Reference |
If the standard output is a tty, the man command pipes its output using the more command with the -s and -v flags. The -s flag eliminates multiple blank lines and stops after each page on the screen. The -v flag suppresses the display of nonprinting characters to the screen. To continue scrolling, press the space bar. To scroll an additional 11 lines when the output stops, press the Ctrl-D key sequence.
The PAGER environment variable can be set to whatever pager is desired. The default value is the more command. To change the default pager, enter:
PAGER=Somepager export PAGER
For example, if there are customized manual pages which are formatted with reverse or fractional line feeds, the PAGER environment variable may be set to /usr/bin/pg so that the line feeds are not printed as control characters. This procedure is not necessary for the manual pages.
When the man command uses a hypertext database, it can retrieve several articles. For example, man open displays several articles. The use of SIGINT (Ctrl-C) exits the man command completely. On the other hand, man open close also displays several articles but the use of SIGINT (Ctrl-C) causes man to display the close command information instead of exiting. Using SIGINT (Ctrl-C) again exits the man command completely.
When specifying one of the Network Computing System library routines that contains a $ (dollar sign) in its name, enter a \ (backslash) preceding the $.
-c | Displays the manual information using the cat command. |
-f | Displays entries in the keyword database related only to the command name given as the final parameter. You can enter more than one command name, each separated by a space. Use this flag to search for command articles only. To use the -f flag, a root user must have previously entered catman -w to create the /usr/share/man/whatis file. |
-k | Displays each line in the keyword database that contains a string of characters matching the title given as the final parameter. You can enter more than one title, each separated by a space. To use the -k flag, a root user must have previously entered catman -w to create the /usr/share/man/whatis file. |
-MPath | Changes the standard location where the man command
searches for manual information. The search path the man command uses is a list of directories separated by a : (colon) in which
manual subdirectories can be found. The MANPATH environment
variable value is used for the default path.
Note
The -M flag is not valid when the man command reads
from the hypertext databases. |
-r | Searches remotely for the manual information. If for any reason (either
the remote machine is not reachable, or there is a problem reading URL or
the Java is not installed on the local machine) the remote search fails,
then man performs a local search for the requested
man page.
Note
The DOCUMENT_SERVER_MACHINE_NAME environment variable should be set to the name of the documentation
search server machine the user wants to use. If the AIX Base Documentation
is not supported for the host's locale, the man command
searches for the documentation for an alternate locale. If the search is successful,
the documentation page is displayed after conversion to the local host's locale.
If the alternate locale is not installed on the local host, the man command fails to display the documentation page. |
-t | Formats the manual information using the troff command. This flag is ignored if the manual page is found in a hypertext information base. |
This command returns the following exit values:
0 | Successful completion. |
>0 | An error occurred. |
man grep
man rpc_\$register
man -k mkdir
The output is equivalent to the apropos command. You receive output from the -k flag only when the /usr/share/man/whatis keyword database already exists.
man -f nroff troff
The output is equivalent to the whatis command. You receive output from the -f flag only when the /usr/share/man/whatis keyword database already exists.
man -M/usr/share/man:/usr/share/man/local ftp
The apropos command, catman command, more command, whatis command, whereis command.