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MAN(P)			   POSIX Programmer's Manual			MAN(P)

PROLOG
       This  manual  page is part of the POSIX Programmer's Manual.  The Linux
       implementation of this interface may differ (consult the	 corresponding
       Linux  manual page for details of Linux behavior), or the interface may
       not be implemented on Linux.

NAME
       man - display system documentation

SYNOPSIS
       man [-k] name...

DESCRIPTION
       The man utility shall write information about each of  the  name	 oper‐
       ands. If name is the name of a standard utility, man at a minimum shall
       write a message describing the syntax used by the standard utility, its
       options,	 and operands. If more information is available, the man util‐
       ity shall provide it in an implementation-defined manner.

       An implementation may provide information for values of name other than
       the  standard utilities. Standard utilities that are listed as optional
       and that are not supported by the implementation either shall  cause  a
       brief  message  indicating  that	 fact to be displayed or shall cause a
       full display of information as described previously.

OPTIONS
       The man utility	shall  conform	to  the	 Base  Definitions  volume  of
       IEEE Std 1003.1-2001, Section 12.2, Utility Syntax Guidelines.

       The following option shall be supported:

       -k     Interpret	 name  operands	 as keywords to be used in searching a
	      utilities summary database that contains a brief	purpose	 entry
	      for each standard utility and write lines from the summary data‐
	      base that match any of the keywords. The	keyword	 search	 shall
	      produce  results	that  are  the equivalent of the output of the
	      following command:

	      grep -Ei '
	      name
	      name...

       This assumes that the summary-database is a text	 file  with  a	single
       entry per line; this organization is not required and the example using
       grep -Ei is merely illustrative of the type  of	search	intended.  The
       purpose	entry  to be included in the database shall consist of a terse
       description of the purpose of the utility.

OPERANDS
       The following operand shall be supported:

       name   A keyword or the name of a standard  utility.  When  -k  is  not
	      specified and name does not represent one of the standard utili‐
	      ties, the results are unspecified.

STDIN
       Not used.

INPUT FILES
       None.

ENVIRONMENT VARIABLES
       The following environment variables shall affect the execution of man:

       LANG   Provide a default value for the  internationalization  variables
	      that  are	 unset	or  null.  (See the Base Definitions volume of
	      IEEE Std 1003.1-2001, Section  8.2,  Internationalization	 Vari‐
	      ables  for the precedence of internationalization variables used
	      to determine the values of locale categories.)

       LC_ALL If set to a non-empty string value, override the values  of  all
	      the other internationalization variables.

       LC_CTYPE
	      Determine	 the  locale  for  the	interpretation of sequences of
	      bytes of text data as characters (for  example,  single-byte  as
	      opposed to multi-byte characters in arguments and in the summary
	      database).  The value of LC_CTYPE need not affect the format  of
	      the information written about the name operands.

       LC_MESSAGES
	      Determine	 the  locale  that should be used to affect the format
	      and contents of diagnostic messages written  to  standard	 error
	      and informative messages written to standard output.

       NLSPATH
	      Determine the location of message catalogs for the processing of
	      LC_MESSAGES .

       PAGER  Determine an output filtering command for writing the output  to
	      a terminal. Any string acceptable as a command_string operand to
	      the sh -c command shall be valid. When standard output is a ter‐
	      minal  device,  the reference page output shall be piped through
	      the command.  If the PAGER variable is null or not set, the com‐
	      mand  shall  be  either  more or another paginator utility docu‐
	      mented in the system documentation.

ASYNCHRONOUS EVENTS
       Default.

STDOUT
       The man utility shall write text describing the syntax of  the  utility
       name,  its  options  and	 its operands, or, when -k is specified, lines
       from the summary database. The format of this text  is  implementation-
       defined.

STDERR
       The standard error shall be used only for diagnostic messages.

OUTPUT FILES
       None.

EXTENDED DESCRIPTION
       None.

EXIT STATUS
       The following exit values shall be returned:

	0     Successful completion.

       >0     An error occurred.

CONSEQUENCES OF ERRORS
       Default.

       The following sections are informative.

APPLICATION USAGE
       None.

EXAMPLES
       None.

RATIONALE
       It  is recognized that the man utility is only of minimal usefulness as
       specified. The opinion of the standard developers was strongly  divided
       as to how much or how little information man should be required to pro‐
       vide. They considered, however, that the provision of some portable way
       of  accessing  documentation  would aid user portability. The arguments
       against a fuller specification were:

	* Large quantities of documentation should not be required on a system
	  that does not have excess disk space.

	* The  current	manual system does not present information in a manner
	  that greatly aids user portability.

	* A "better help system" is currently an area in  which	 vendors  feel
	  that they can add value to their POSIX implementations.

       The -f option was considered, but due to implementation differences, it
       was not included in this volume of IEEE Std 1003.1-2001.

       The description was changed to be more specific about what  has	to  be
       displayed for a utility. The standard developers considered it insuffi‐
       cient to allow a display of only the synopsis without  giving  a	 short
       description of what each option and operand does.

       The  "purpose"  entry  to be included in the database can be similar to
       the section title  (less	 the  numeric  prefix)	from  this  volume  of
       IEEE Std 1003.1-2001  for  each	utility.  These	 titles are similar to
       those used in historical systems for this purpose.

       See mailx for rationale concerning the default paginator.

       The caveat in the LC_CTYPE description was added because it  is	not  a
       requirement  that  an implementation provide reference pages for all of
       its supported locales on each system; changing LC_CTYPE does not neces‐
       sarily  translate  the  reference  page	into another language. This is
       equivalent    to	   the	  current    state    of    LC_MESSAGES	    in
       IEEE Std 1003.1-2001-locale-specific  messages  are  not yet a require‐
       ment.

       The historical MANPATH variable is not included	in  POSIX  because  no
       attempt is made to specify naming conventions for reference page files,
       nor even to mandate that they are files at all.	 On  some  implementa‐
       tions  they  could  be a true database, a hypertext file, or even fixed
       strings within the man executable.  The standard developers  considered
       the  portability	 of reference pages to be outside their scope of work.
       However, users should be aware that MANPATH is implemented on a	number
       of historical systems and that it can be used to tailor the search pat‐
       tern for reference pages from the various categories (utilities,	 func‐
       tions,  file  formats, and so on) when the system administrator reveals
       the location and conventions for reference pages on the system.

       The keyword search can rely on at least the text of the section	titles
       from  these  utility  descriptions, and the implementation may add more
       keywords. The term "section titles" refers to the strings such as:

	      man - Display system documentation
	      ps - Report process status

FUTURE DIRECTIONS
       None.

SEE ALSO
       more

COPYRIGHT
       Portions of this text are reprinted and reproduced in  electronic  form
       from IEEE Std 1003.1, 2003 Edition, Standard for Information Technology
       -- Portable Operating System Interface (POSIX),	The  Open  Group  Base
       Specifications  Issue  6,  Copyright  (C) 2001-2003 by the Institute of
       Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc and The Open  Group.  In  the
       event of any discrepancy between this version and the original IEEE and
       The Open Group Standard, the original IEEE and The Open Group  Standard
       is  the	referee document. The original Standard can be obtained online
       at http://www.opengroup.org/unix/online.html .

IEEE/The Open Group		     2003				MAN(P)
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