HP-UX Reference (11i v1 05/09) - 1 User Commands A-M (vol 1)

m
man(1) man(1)
for one or more of the entries indicated. section corresponds to the section number
where the entry appears in the HP-UX Reference. It can be followed by an optional
uppercase/lowercase subsection identifier such as
3C which would indicate a library
routine in Section 3.
3, 3c, and
3C are interpreted as equivalent, since all Section 3
manual entries are stored in the same or in related directories (such as
/usr/share/man/man3.Z
and /usr/share/man/man3
. However, if an
entry is in Section 1M, section must be specified as
1m or 1M.
entry_name Search for a specific entry name where entry_name is the name of the manual entry
without its section-number suffix. Except for names exceeding 11 characters,
entry_name is identical to the name of the manual entry as listed at the top of each
page, or is the same as one of the keywords in the left-hand part of the one-line
description in the corresponding manual entry.
If entry_name is longer than 11 characters,
man
first searches for the full-length
entry_name. If not found, entry_name is truncated to 11 characters to ensure that
there is room for the section suffix in 14-character source file names. Files in the
/usr/share/man/∗
directories are normally installed with the filename truncated
to 11 characters where necessary so that the name plus a three-character section
suffix does not exceed the maximum filename length on short filename systems.
If section is not specified (see previous argument description),
man searches all sec-
tions of the manual in order:
man1, man2, man1M, man3, man4, man5
, man6,
man7, man8, man9, manlocal, mannew, manold, then manpublic; and print-
ing the first matching entry it encounters.
If there is more than one manual entry among the sections, the first manual entry is
displayed. For example, man intro will display only intro(1). man 4 intro
will display intro(4).
If the standard output is a teletype, and if the - flag is not given,
man pipes its output through more
(see more(1)), with the -s option, to eliminate multiple blank lines and stop after each screenful. This
default behavior can be changed by setting the PAGER variable in the user’s environment. The value of
PAGER must be a string that names an output filter (such as pg(1)), along with the desired options.
File Search Conventions
man searches in several directories, as appropriate, for the specified manual entry. The search continues
until either the entry is found or all candidate directories are searched. The first three directories
searched, in order, are: /usr/share/man
, /usr/contrib/man, and /usr/local/man
.
The
MANPATH environment variable can be used to specify directories to be searched, and, if set, overrides
the default paths given above. Upon logging in, /etc/profile (or/etc/csh.login
) sets the
MANPATH environment variable to default settings. If the file /etc/MANPATH exists, the default settings
are taken from this file. The MANPATH variable follows the same form as the PATH
variable (see
environ(5)).
Within each of these directories,
man searches in the cat∗.Z subdirectories, the
man∗.Z subdirec-
tories, the
cat∗ subdirectories, and the
man∗ subdirectories. man∗.Z and man∗ directories contain
nroff(1)-compatible source text for the entries.
cat∗.Z and cat∗ directories contain the formatted ver-
sions of the entries.
man∗.Z and cat.Z directories contain entries in compressed form. Files in these
directories are uncompressed by uncompress (see compress(1)) before being processed for printing or
display.
If the LANG environment variable is set to any valid language name defined by lang(5), and the MAN-
PATH
variable is not set, or is set to the default directories, man searches in three additional directories
for the manual entry before searching in /usr/share/man. First, man searches in
/usr/share/man/$LANG, then in /usr/contrib/man/$LANG
, then in
/usr/local/man/$LANG. Thus, native-language manual entries are displayed if they are present and
installed properly in the system.
If the MANPATH environment variable is set to anything other than the default, the above directories with
$LANG as part of the path are not automatically searched. All directories must be explicitly given in
MANPATH. The %L, %l, %t, and %c specifiers can be used as path components to cause locale-specific
directories to be searched. See environ(5) for a complete description of MANPATH.
man uses the most recent version that it finds in the subdirectories searched. If the most recent version is
in:
HP-UX 11i Version 1: September 2005 − 2 − Hewlett-Packard Company Section 1−−541