Man page 1

Man page
Man pages (short for manual pages) are the extensive documentation
that comes preinstalled with almost all substantial Unix and Unix-like
operating systems. The Unix command used to display them is man.
Each page is a self-contained document.

Usage
To read a manual page for a Unix command, one can use
The man page on man
man <command_name>

at a shell prompt: for example, "man ftp". In order to simplify navigation through the output, man generally uses
the less terminal pager.
Pages are traditionally referred to using the notation "name(section)": for example, ftp(1) [1]. The same page name
may appear in more than one section of the manual, as when the names of system calls, user commands, or macro
packages coincide. Examples are man(1) [2] and man(7) [3], or exit(2) [4] and exit(3) [5]. The syntax for accessing the
non-default manual section varies between different man implementations. On Linux and *BSD, for example, the
syntax for reading printf(3) [6] is

man 3 printf

which searches for printf in section 3 of the man pages.

History
The UNIX Programmer's Manual was first published on November 3, 1971. The first actual man pages were written
by Dennis Ritchie and Ken Thompson at the insistence of Doug McIlroy in 1971. The troff macros used for man
pages (-mm) were the general-purpose ones written by Ted Dolotta (later to be the first manager of USG and the
principal author of the System III manual), with additions for the manuals. At the time, the availability of online
documentation through the manual page system was regarded as a great advance. To this day, virtually every Unix
command line application comes with its man page, and many Unix users perceive a lack of man pages as a sign of
low quality; indeed, some projects, such as Debian, go out of their way to write man pages for programs lacking one.
Few alternatives to man have enjoyed much popularity, with the possible exception of GNU Project's "info" system,
an early and simple hypertext system.
However, the format of a single page for each application, the lack of classification within the sections and the
relatively unsophisticated formatting facilities have motivated the development of alternative documentation
systems, such as the previously mentioned info system.
Most Unix GUI applications (particularly those built using the GNOME and KDE development environments) now
provide end-user documentation in HTML and include embedded HTML viewers such as yelp for reading the help
within the application.
Usually the man pages are written in English. Translations into other languages can be also available on the system.
The default format of the man pages is troff, with either the macro package man (appearance oriented) or on some
systems mdoc (semantic oriented). This makes it possible to typeset a man page to PostScript, PDF and various other
formats for viewing or printing.
Man page 2

The man package on most modern linux distributions includes the man2html command which can be used to enable
users to browse their man pages using a html browser.
In 2010, OpenBSD deprecated troff for formatting manpages in favour of mandoc, a specialised compiler/formatter
for manpages with native support for output in PostScript, HTML, XHTML, and the terminal.

Manual sections
The manual is generally split into eight numbered sections, organized as follows (on BSD, Unix and Linux):

Section Description

1 General commands

2 System calls

3 C library functions

4 Special files (usually devices, those found in /dev) and

drivers

5 File formats and conventions

6 Games and screensavers

7 Miscellanea

8 System administration commands and daemons

Unix System V uses a similar numbering scheme, except in a different order:

Section Description

1 General commands

2 System calls

3 C library functions

4 File formats and conventions

5 Miscellanea

6 Games and screensavers

7 Special files (usually devices, those found in /dev) and

drivers

8 System administration commands and daemons

On some systems some of the following sections are available:

Section Description

0 C library header files

9 Kernel routines

n Tcl/Tk keywords

x The X Window System

The sections are further subdivided by means of a suffix letter, such that section 3C is for C library calls, 3M is for
the math library, and so on. A consequence of this is that section 8 (system administration commands) is sometimes
relegated to the 1M subsection of the main commands section. Some subsection suffixes have a general meaning
across sections:
Man page 3

Subsection Description

p POSIX specifications

x X Window System documentation

Some versions of man cache the formatted versions of the last several pages viewed.
To see options you can use with command man, enter the command man man.

Layout
All man pages follow a common layout that is optimized for presentation on a simple ASCII text display, possibly
without any form of highlighting or font control. Sections present may include:
NAME
The name of the command or function, followed by a one-line description of what it does.
SYNOPSIS
In the case of a command, you get a formal description of how to run it and what command line options it
takes. For program functions, a list of the parameters the function takes and which header file contains its
definition. For experienced users, this may be all the documentation they need.
DESCRIPTION
A textual description of the functioning of the command or function.
EXAMPLES
Some examples of common usage.
SEE ALSO
A list of related commands or functions.
Other sections may be present, but these are not well standardized across man pages. Common examples include:
OPTIONS, EXIT STATUS, ENVIRONMENT, KNOWN BUGS, FILES, AUTHOR, REPORTING BUGS,
HISTORY and COPYRIGHT.

Writing man pages

On Apple Mac OS X and GNU/Linux systems, two groff macro packages are available for use in writing manual
pages, man and mdoc. The man macro package is older and is the traditional macro package used to write manual
pages on UNIX systems, whereas the mdoc package is newer and offers more support for semantic structuring of
documents. The commands man groff_man and man groff_mdoc may be used in Mac OS X and GNU/Linux to
bring up the online documentation (man pages) for using the man and mdoc macro packages, respectively.
In addition, one can simply inspect the source code for man pages installed on the system to see how they are
written, typically found in /usr/share/man and other directories on Mac OS X and GNU/Linux systems. (To find the
location of the manual page source file for command command, type man -w command.)
Besides viewing manual pages online (with man), man pages may also readily be converted to PDF format for
immediate printing. In Mac OS X and GNU/Linux (with command replaced by the name of the desired command):

groff -mandoc command.1 >command.ps

gs -dNOPAUSE -dBATCH -sDEVICE=pdfwrite -sOutputFile=command.pdf command.ps

The former command exports the manual page to PostScript format, while the latter then converts the resulting
PostScript file to PDF. (The above works for both man- and mdoc-formatted manual pages.) In some cases, the
hardcopy version of the manual page may be more readable if printed using a monospaced font; to do so, add the
Man page 4

option -f C after the -mandoc option in the groff command above.

See also
• List of Unix utilities
• List of Plan 9 applications
• Info (Unix)
• RTFM

External links
• Unix Programmer's Manual of November 3, 1971 [7] (see also the original scans in PS and PDF format [8]).
• man [9]: One open-source implementation of man; used on Red Hat, Mac OS X and others.
• man-db [10]: Alternative implementation of man; used in Debian/Ubuntu, Suse and others.
• UNIX Manual Pages [11]: Resource for the mdoc UNIX manual page language.
• man(1) [2]: format and display the on-line manual pages – Linux User Commands Manual

Repositories of manual pages

• Debian GNU/Linux man pages [12]
• DragonFlyBSD manual pages [13]
• FreeBSD Hypertext Man Pages [14] including man pages for other Unix operating systems, current and historical.
• Gobuntu Manual Pages [15]
• Inferno Manual — Volume 1 [16]
• Linux and Solaris 10 Man Pages [17]
• LinuxManPages.com [18] with user comments
• Linux man pages at die.net [19]
• Linux/FreeBSD Man Pages [20] with user comments
• Mac OS X Manual Pages [21]
• Man-Wiki: Linux / Solaris / UNIX / BSD [22] in MediaWiki format
• NetBSD manual pages [23]
• On-line UNIX manual pages [24]
• OpenBSD manual pages [25]
• OS X command [26] An A-Z Index of the Apple OS X command line
• Plan 9 Manual — Volume 1 [27]
• Storage Foundation Man Pages [28]
• The UNIX and Linux Forums Man Page Repository [29] with recursive search for multiple OS.
• Ubuntu Manpage Repository [30]
This article was originally based on material from the Free On-line Dictionary of Computing, which is licensed
under the GFDL.
Man page 5

References
[1] http:/ / linux. die. net/ man/ 1/ ftp
[2] http:/ / linux. die. net/ man/ 1/ man
[3] http:/ / linux. die. net/ man/ 7/ man
[4] http:/ / linux. die. net/ man/ 2/ exit
[5] http:/ / linux. die. net/ man/ 3/ exit
[6] http:/ / linux. die. net/ man/ 3/ printf
[7] http:/ / man. cat-v. org/ unix-1st/
[8] http:/ / cm. bell-labs. com/ cm/ cs/ who/ dmr/ 1stEdman. html
[9] http:/ / primates. ximian. com/ ~flucifredi/ man/
[10] http:/ / man-db. nongnu. org/
[11] http:/ / manpages. bsd. lv
[12] http:/ / manpages. debian. net/
[13] http:/ / leaf. dragonflybsd. org/ cgi/ web-man
[14] http:/ / www. freebsd. org/ cgi/ man. cgi
[15] http:/ / en. linuxpages. info/ index. php?title=Main_Page
[16] http:/ / man. cat-v. org/ inferno/
[17] http:/ / www. manpages. spotlynx. com/
[18] http:/ / linuxmanpages. com/
[19] http:/ / linux. die. net/ man/
[20] http:/ / manpagehelp. net
[21] http:/ / developer. apple. com/ documentation/ Darwin/ Reference/ ManPages/ index. html
[22] http:/ / man-wiki. net/ index. php/ Main_Page
[23] http:/ / netbsd. gw. com/ cgi-bin/ man-cgi
[24] http:/ / unixhelp. ed. ac. uk/ alphabetical/ index. html
[25] http:/ / www. openbsd. org/ cgi-bin/ man. cgi
[26] http:/ / ss64. com/ osx/
[27] http:/ / man. cat-v. org/ plan_9/
[28] http:/ / vos. symantec. com/ documents/ doc_details/ sfha/ 5. 0%20MP3/ Linux/ ManualPages/
[29] http:/ / www. unix. com/ man-page/ OpenSolaris/ 1/ man/
[30] http:/ / manpages. ubuntu. com/
Article Sources and Contributors 6

Article Sources and Contributors

Man page  Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?oldid=375920127  Contributors: AVB, Abdull, Admrboltz, Aervanath, Agarvin, Alf7e, Andyluciano, Atlant, B4hand, Bevo, C. A.
Russell, Chealer, Chengiz, Codex24, Cy21, DAGwyn, Daedalus-Prime, Damian Yerrick, Diberri, Dkasak, EdC, Edcolins, Edward, Egil, Eli the Bearded, Elzbal, Emperorbma, Everyking, Fluff,
Fluffy 543, Frap, Freakinbock, Gary King, Ghettoblaster, Glenn, Graham87, Graue, Haakon, Hede2000, Heron, Horovits, Javifs, Jeffq, Jerome Charles Potts, Jgrahn, Jic, JorgePeixoto, Joy, Jsnx,
Juhtolv, Ksn, LAMurakami, LOL, LVC, Larsinio, LeeHunter, Lindberg G Williams Jr, LinuxSneaker, Lost.goblin, Lucifred, MarkMLl, Markhobley, Marudubshinki, Massysett, Mieciu K,
MikeRS, Narendra Sisodiya, Newmanbe, Nfearnley, Owain, Panarjedde, Pascalv, Perique des Palottes, Peter L, Pharos, Pieleric, Pooryorick, Prara, Psychonaut, Quuxplusone, Raymond Pasco,
Reisio, Rich Farmbrough, Robert Merkel, Rocket2DMn, Rpop, Sicking, SonicTheHedgehog, Stassats, Stefano85, SteveBaker, Technion, Tedickey, Teratornis, The Thing That Should Not Be,
Theusername, Timtrent, Tomjenkins52, Uncle G, Unixguy, Yath, Yutsi, Zoicon5, 91 anonymous edits

Image Sources, Licenses and Contributors

Image:Unix manual.png  Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=File:Unix_manual.png  License: GNU General Public License  Contributors: User:Admrboltz

License
Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported
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