# man(1)

    NAME
         man - display online manual pages

    SYNOPSIS
         man [-antkfq] [-M path] [-s section] title ...

    DESCRIPTION
         Man displays the online manual pages for  the  specified  titles  in  the
         specified sections.  The sections are as follows:

         1    User Commands
              Generic commands such as ls, cp, grep.

         2    System Calls
              Low level routines that directly interface with the kernel.

         3    Library Routines
              Higher level C language subroutines.

         4    Device Files
              Describes devices in /dev.

         5    File Formats
              Formats of files handled by various utilities and subroutines.

         6    Games
              It's not UNIX without an adventure game.

         7    Miscellaneous
              Macro packages, miscellaneous tidbits.

         8    System Utilities
              Commands for the System Administrator.

         9    Documents
              Larger manuals explaining some commands in more detail.

         (If you are new to Minix then try man hier, it will show you  around  the
         file system and give you many pointers to other manual pages.)

         By default, man will try the following files in a manual  page  directory
         for the command man -s 1 ls:

              cat1/ls.1
              cat1/ls.1.Z
              man1/ls.1
              man1/ls.1.Z

         Files in the man[1-8] directories are formatted with nroff  -man.   Those
         in man9 are formatted with nroff -mnx.  Files in the cat? directories are
         preformatted.  Files with names ending in .Z are decompressed first  with
         zcat  (see compress(1)).  The end result is presented to the user using a
         pager if displaying on the screen.

         For each manual page directory in its search path, man will first try all
         the  subdirectories of the manual page directory for the files above, and
         then the directory itself.  The directory /usr/man contains the  standard
         manual  pages,  with  manual  pages  for optional packages installed in a
         subdirectory of /usr/man, with  the  same  structure  as  /usr/man.   The
         directory   /usr/local/man   contains  manual  pages  for  locally  added
         software.  By default /usr/local/man is searched first, then /usr/man.

         A title is not simply used as a  filename,  because  several  titles  may
         refer  to  the  same  manual page.  Each manual page directory contains a
         database of titles in the whatis(5) file that is created by makewhatis(1)
         from  the  NAME sections of all the manual pages.  A title is searched in
         this database and the first title on a whatis line is used as a filename.

    OPTIONS
         The options may be interspersed with  the  titles  to  search,  and  take
         effect for the titles after them.

         -a   Show all the manual pages or one line descriptions  with  the  given
              title in all the specified sections in all the manual directories in
              the search path.  Normally only the first page found is shown.

         -n   Use nroff -man to format manual pages (default).

         -t   Use troff -man to format manual pages.

         -f   Use whatis(1) to show a one line description of the title  from  the
              whatis(5) file.

         -k   Use apropos(1) to show all the one line descriptions  of  the  title
              anywhere in the whatis(5) files (implies -a).

         -q   Quietly check if all requested manual pages exist.   No  output,  no
              errors, just an exit code.

         -M path
              Use path as the search path for manual directories.

         -s section
              Section is the section number the page is to be found in, or a comma
              separated  list  of  sections  to  use.   Normally  all sections are
              searched.  The search is always in numerical order  no  matter  what
              your  section  list  looks  like.   A  single  digit is treated as a
              section number without the -s for compatibility with  BSD-style  man
              commands.

    ENVIRONMENT

         MANPATH        This is a colon separated list of  directories  to  search
                        for manual pages, by default /usr/local/man:/usr/man.

         PAGER          The program to use to display the manual page or one  line
                        descriptions on the screen page by page.  By default more.

    FILES

         /usr/man/whatis          One of the whatis(5) databases.

    SEE ALSO
         nroff(1),  troff(1),  more(1),   whatis(1),   makewhatis(1),   catman(1),
         whatis(5), man(7).

    AUTHOR
         Kees J. Bot (kjb@cs.vu.nl)