man - Display sections of the online reference manual
Format
- man [-wx] [-M path] [section] entry ...
- man -k [-M path] keyword ...
Description
man displays help information about both shell commands and the z/OS® UNIX set of TSO/E commands. You can use it to search help files having the specified keywords associated with them.
Options
- -k
- Searches a precomputed database of syntax lines for information about keywords.
- -M path
- Searches the directories indicated by path for help files. If
-M is not specified, man uses the path specified in the MANPATH
environment variable if set; otherwise man searches
/usr/man/%L. The value of the LANG environment variable is substituted for
%L
in this directory and in the directories specified by MANPATH. All help files are found by searching similarly structured file trees rooted at one or more places. See Files for a description of what files and directories man should find in each directory that it searches. - -w
- Displays only the filename of the file containing the help file.
- -x
- Displays what files man is searching to find the help file. -x also displays any errors that man encounters while extracting man pages from online book files.
- section
- Is a number (0-9) representing a section of the online help. When you specify a section number,
man searches only that section for entry, instead of searching all sections. The
online help available for z/OS UNIX contains one
section: 1 Commands
To find a given entry, man checks each directory in MANPATH for a file with a specific name. For each section number requested, man searches MANPATH for the following files in this order:
- catn/entry.n in each directory in MANPATH.
- mann/*.stfp in each directory in MANPATH.
- mann/entry.n in each directory in MANPATH.
If no section number is specified then man searches all sections in order from 1 to 9, then 0. The first entry found by man is the one displayed.
pg -e -p '(Page %d)'
If you are running in a double-byte locale, set MANPAGER or PAGER to invoke a command which supports double-byte characters, such as the more command. pg does not support double-byte characters.
Examples
man -k compare
man tsomount
man dbxalias
The same applies for the pdbx subcommands. For
example, enter: man pdbxcont
to display information about the
cont subcommand.man lsF
man tcshat
Environment variables
- MANPATH
- Contains a list of paths to search for man pages.
- MANPAGER, PAGER
- Contains an output filtering command for use when displaying man pages on
a terminal.
If you are running in a double-byte locale, verify that this variable is set to a command which supports double-byte characters, such as the more command.
- TMPDIR
- Identifies the directory where temporary files reside.
Localization
- LANG
- LC_ALL
- LC_CTYPE
- LC_MESSAGES
- NLSPATH
Files
- /usr/man/%L/man[0-9]/*.stfpt
- Single-tagged preformatted plain text file that contains man pages.
- /usr/man/%L/cat[0-9]/ * .[0-9]
- Subdirectories containing formatted help files.
- /usr/man/%L/whatis
- Database used by -k option.
Exit values
0
- Topic not found.
1
- Topic contents exceeded the buffer length.
-1
- No errors.
If the -k option was specified and man encounters errors while extracting man pages from online book files, these exit values are displayed.
Portability
POSIX.2 User Portability Extension, X/Open Portability Guide, UNIX systems.
The elements of the environment variable MANPATH are separated by colons.
The -M option, the -x option, the -w option, the MANPAGER environment variable, the default pager, and the ability to specify section on the command line are all extensions to the POSIX standard.
Related information
help, more