man - format and display the on-line manual pages ("on-line" meaning “on the computer”, as opposed to “on paper”, not “on the Internet”)
A traditional Unix documentation system, man is the main documentation scheme on most Unix-like OS's.
According to man itself, it is:
an interface to the on-line reference manuals.
The pages are usually written in English, with translations sometimes provided.
Man topics fall into these numbered sections, though section numbers may differ from system to system:
1 - Executable programs and shell commands, eg.
man aspellorman 1 aspell2 - System calls (kernel functions), eg.
man delete_moduleorman 2 delete_module3 - Library calls, eg.
man 3 assert4 - Special files (usually devices found in /dev) and drivers, eg.
man console5 - File formats and conventions, eg.
man bounce6 - Games and screensavers, eg:
man gnome-mahjongg7 - Miscellaneous (including macro packages and conventions), e.g.
man 7 man,man x8 - System administration commands (usually only for root), e.g.
man wpa_passphrase9 - Kernel routines [Non standard]
0 - C library header files [Non standard]
Section numbers are used in man calls for disambiguation, when there are documents for the same names, but different topics, in different sections, eg.
man 2 exitforexitkernel function terminating the calling process immediately, andman 3 exitfor a standard library function call that causes normal termination of the process.
Similar documentation standards
Shell built-ins usually do not have their separate man pages. Their short description can be viewed with the help command.
In recent years, software providers often choose info pages as their documentation scheme.
Useful commands
Man pages of
manman man
Further reading
Internal links
External links
- History of UNIX Manpages
- THE LINUX MAN-PAGE-HOWTO by Jens Schweikhardt
- Writing Effective Manual Pages by Larry Kollar
See also
/ infotag
