Detailed explanation of man command

Name

Man-format and display the on-line manual pages: formatted display of online man pages

Sysnosis

Man [- acdDfFhkKtvVwW] [--path] [- m system] [- p string] [- C config_file] [- M pathlist] [- P pager] [- B browser] [- H htmlpager] [- S section_list] [section] name...

DESCRIPTION:

Man formats and displays the on-line manual pages: formatted display of online man pages

If you specify section, man only looks in that section of the manual: specify a chapter. Man will only view that chapter.

Name is of a command,function, or file. The name is 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: if the name contains a slash, man interprets it as a file description, so you can use man. / foo.5 or man / cd/foo/bar.1.gz

See below for description of where man looks for the manual page files

MANUAL SECTIONS:

The standard sections of the manual include: the standard manual section contains:

1 user Commands: user command

2 System calls: system call

3 C library Functions C library function

4 Device and Special Flies: devices and specified files

5 File Formats and Conventions (configuration) file format and convention

6 Games et. Al.: games

7 Miscellanea: miscellaneous

8 System Administration tools and daemons management tools (commands) and background processes

Distributions customize the manual section to their specifics, which often include additional sections: version of the custom manual chapter to their different details, which usually contains additional chapters

Configuration file for the man command: / etc/man.config

The paragraphs in the help manual say:

NAME

SYSNOPSIS

DESCRIPTION

OPTIONS

EXAMPLES

AUTHOR

REPORTING BUGS

The meaning of symbols in SYNOPSIS:

[]: optional content

: required

A | b: choose one of the two

...: the same content can appear multiple times.

How to operate the man command:

Space ^ f ^ F ^ V: flip the screen to the end of the file

B ^ B: flip the screen to the head of the file

D, ^ D: flip half the screen to the end of the file

U, ^ U: turn half the screen to the head of the file

RETRUN or ^ N or e or ^ E or j or ^ J: flip a line to the end of the file

Y ^ y ^ P k ^ K: turn a line to the beginning of the file

Q: exit

Jump to # line: #

1G: go back to the header of the file

G: skip to the end of the file

File search:

/ KEYWORD:

Search the end of the file from the current location using the string specified by KEYWORD as the keyword. By default, it is not case-sensitive.

N: next

N: previous

? KEYWORD:

Search the header of the file from the current location using the string specified by KEYWORD as the keyword, case-insensitive

N: in the same direction as the search command, next

N: in the opposite direction of the search command, last