$man man
man(1) man(1)
NAME
man - format and display the on-line manual pages
SYNOPSIS
man [-acdDfFhkKtwW] [--path] [-m system] [-p string] [-C config_file] [-M pathlist] [-P pager] [-B browser] [-H htmlpager] [-S sec-
tion_list] [section] name ...
DESCRIPTION
man formats and displays the on-line manual pages. If you specify section, man only looks in that section of the manual. name is nor-
mally the name of the manual page, which is typically the name of a command, function, or file. However, if name contains a slash (/)
then man interprets it as a file specification, so that you can do man ./foo.5 or even man /cd/foo/bar.1.gz.
See below for a description of where man looks for the manual page files.
MANUAL SECTIONS
The standard sections of the manual include:
1 User Commands
2 System Calls
3 C Library Functions
4 Devices and Special Files
5 File Formats and Conventions
6 Games et. Al.
7 Miscellanea
8 System Administration tools and Deamons
Distributions customize the manual section to their specifics, which often include additional sections.
OPTIONS
-C config_file
Specify the configuration file to use; the default is @man_config_file@. (See man.conf(5).)
-M path
Specify the list of directories to search for man pages. Separate the directories with colons. An empty list is the same as not
specifying -M at all. See SEARCH PATH FOR MANUAL PAGES.
-P pager
Specify which pager to use. This option overrides the MANPAGER environment variable, which in turn overrides the PAGER variable.
By default, man uses @pager@.