Mac OS X in a Nutshell

Name

man

Synopsis

man [options] [section] [title]

Displays information from the online reference manuals. man locates and prints the named title from the designated reference section.

Options

-a

Show all pages matching title.

-b

Leave blank lines in output.

-d

Display debugging information. Suppress actual printing of manual pages.

-f

Same as whatis command.

-k

Same as apropos command.

-m systems, -- systems = systems

Search systems' manual pages. systems should be a comma-separated list.

-p preprocessors, -- processor = processors

Preprocess manual pages with preprocessors before turning them over to nroff, troff, or groff. Always runs soelim first.

-t

Format the manual page with troff.

-w

Print pathnames of entries on standard output.

-M path, -- manpath = path

Search for manual pages in path. Ignore -m option.

-P pager, -- pager = pager

Select paging program pager to display the entry.

Section names

Manual pages are divided into sections, depending on their intended audience:

1

Executable programs or shell commands

2

System calls (functions provided by the kernel)

3

Library calls (functions within system libraries)

4

Special files (usually found in /dev)

5

File formats and conventions

6

Games

7

Macro packages and conventions

8

System administration commands (usually only for a privileged user)

9

Kernel routines (nonstandard)