unix manual page

Free On-line Dictionary of Computing

<operating system> (Or "man page") A part of Unix's extensive on-line documentation. To read a manual page from the Unix command line, type:

man [-s<section>] <page>

e.g. "man ftp" (the section number can usually be omitted). Pages are traditionally referred to using the notation "page(section)", e.g. ftp(1).

Under SunOS (which is fairly typical), Section 1 covers commands, 2 system calls, 3 C library routines, 4 devices and networks, 5 file formats, 6 games and demos, 7 miscellaneous, 8 system administration. Each section has an introduction which can be obtained with, e.g., "man 2 intro".

Manual pages are stored as nroff source files. Formatted versions are also usually cached. Man pages for most versions of Unix are available on-line in HTML.

Unix manual page: man(1).

Linux man pages (http://www.kernel.org/doc/man-pages/).

Solaris man pages (http://docs.sun.com/app/docs/coll/40.10).

(2010-01-19)