MAN(1)

NAME
man - display online manual documentation pages

SYNOPSIS
man [-adhlo] [-t | -w] [-M manpath] [-P pager] [-S mansect] [-m arch[:machine]] [-p [eprtv]] [mansect] page | file ...
man -K | -f | -k expression ...

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.  FreeBSD General Commands Manual
2.  FreeBSD System Calls Manual
3.  FreeBSD Library Functions Manual
4.  FreeBSD Kernel Interfaces Manual
5.  FreeBSD File Formats Manual
6.  FreeBSD Games Manual
7.  FreeBSD Miscellaneous Information Manual
8.  FreeBSD System Manager's Manual
9.  FreeBSD Kernel Developer's Manual

Options that man understands:

-K expression
    Search full text of all manual pages for an extended regular expression, as described in re_format(7). This option requires mandoc(1). This is a slow operation.

-M manpath
    Force a specific colon separated manual path instead of the default search path. See MANPATH in ENVIRONMENT.

-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
    Restrict 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 expression
    Search names of all manual pages for an extended regular expression, emulating whatis(1).

-h  Display short help message and exit.

-k expression
    Search names and descriptions of all manual pages for an extended regular expression, emulating basic functionality of apropos(1).

-l  Interpret all arguments as absolute or relative filename(s) of the manual page(s) to display. No search is done and the options -M, -m, and -S are ignored.

-m arch[:machine]
    Override the default architecture and machine settings allowing lookup of other platform specific manual pages. See IMPLEMENTATION NOTES for how this option changes the default behavior. Overrides the MACHINE_ARCH and MACHINE environment variables.

-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) (ports/textproc/groff) or troff(1) (ports/textproc/groff). Valid preprocessors arguments:

    e   eqn(1) (ports/textproc/groff)
    p   pic(1) (ports/textproc/groff)
    r   refer(1) (ports/textproc/groff)
    t   tbl(1) (ports/textproc/groff)
    v   vgrind(1)

    Overrides the MANROFFSEQ environment variable.

-t  Send manual page source through troff(1) (ports/textproc/groff) 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.

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

  Platform Specific Searches
The man utility supports platform specific manual pages. The search behavior is dictated by the -m option or the MACHINE_ARCH and MACHINE environment variables. For example, if MACHINE_ARCH is set to ‘aarch64’ and MACHINE is set to ‘arm64’, man will search the following paths when considering section 4 manual pages in /usr/share/man:

/usr/share/man/man4/aarch64
/usr/share/man/man4/arm64
/usr/share/man/man4

  Displaying Specific Manual Files
For compatibility reasons, man will interpret any argument containing at least one ‘/’ character as an absolute or relative path to a manual page to be displayed. This heuristic, made redundant by the more widely supported -l option, is now deprecated and may be removed in future releases.

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
    A colon (‘’): separated list of directories to check for manual pages. 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. See manpath(1).

MANROFFSEQ
    Used to determine the preprocessors for the manual source before running nroff(1) (ports/textproc/groff) or troff(1) (ports/textproc/groff). If unset, defaults to tbl(1) (ports/textproc/groff). 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

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) using cat(1) as the pager:

    $ man -P cat ls

Show the location of the ls(1) manual page:

    $ man -w ls

Show a manual page in the current working directory:

    $ man -l man.1

Show the location of manual pages in sections 1 and 8 which contain the word ‘arm’:

    $ man -w -K '\<arm\>' -S 1:8

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), re_format(7), intro(8), intro(9)