man.conf.5

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.\"	@(#)man.conf.5	8.5 (Berkeley) 1/2/94
.\"
.Dd $Mdocdate: October 28 2010 $
.Dt MAN.CONF 5
.Os
.Sh NAME
.Nm man.conf
.Nd configuration file for
.Xr man 1
.Sh DESCRIPTION
The
.Xr man 1 ,
.Xr apropos 1 ,
and
.Xr whatis 1
commands
search for manual pages or their database files as specified by the
.Nm man.conf
file.
Manual pages are normally expected to be preformatted (see
.Xr mandoc 1 )
and named with a trailing
.Sq .0 .
.Pp
The
.Nm man.conf
file contains two types of lines.
.Pp
The first type of line is a
.Dq section
line, which contains a section name followed by one or more directory paths.
The directory paths may contain the normal shell globbing characters,
including curly braces
.Pq Sq {} ;
to escape a shell globbing character, precede it with a backslash
.Pq Sq \e .
Lines in this format specify that manual pages for the section
may be found in the following directories.
.Pp
Directories named with a trailing slash character
.Pq Sq /
are expected to contain subdirectories of manual pages, (see the keyword
.Dq _subdir
below) instead of manual pages.
These subdirectories are searched instead of the directory.
.Pp
Before searching any directory for a manual page, the
.Xr man 1
command always searches the subdirectory with the same name
as the current machine type, if it exists.
No specification of these subdirectories is necessary in the
.Nm man.conf
file.
.Pp
Section names are unrestricted except for the reserved words specified
below; in general, you should avoid anything with a leading underscore
.Pq Sq _
to avoid future incompatibilities.
.Pp
The section named
.Dq _default
is the list of directories that will
be searched if no section is specified by the user.
.Pp
The second type of line is preceded with a
.Dq keyword .
The possible keywords and their meanings are as follows:
.Bl -tag -width "_version"
.It _build
Man file names, regardless of their format, are expected to end in a
.Sq .*
pattern, i.e. a
.Sq .\&
followed by some suffix.
The first field of a _build line lists a suffix which indicates
files which need to be reformatted or manipulated in some way before
being displayed to the user.
The suffix may contain the normal shell globbing characters (NOT
including curly braces
.Pq Sq {} ) .
The rest of the line must be a shell command line, the standard
output of which is the manual page in a format which may be directly
displayed to the user.
Any occurrences of the string
.Sq %s
in the shell command line will
be replaced by the name of the file which is being reformatted.
.It _subdir
The list
.Pq in search order
of subdirectories which will be searched in
any directory named with a trailing slash
.Pq Sq /
character.
This list is also used when a path is specified to the
.Xr man 1
utility by the user, using the
.Ev MANPATH
environment variable or the
.Fl M
and
.Fl m
options.
.It _suffix
Man file names, regardless of their format, are expected to end in a
.Sq .*
pattern, i.e. a
.Sq .\&
followed by some suffix.
Each field of a _suffix line is a suffix which indicates
files which do not need to be reformatted or manipulated
in any way, but which may be directly displayed to the user.
Each suffix may contain the normal shell globbing characters (NOT
including curly braces
.Pq Sq {} ) .
.It _version
The version of the configuration file.
.It _whatdb
The full pathname
.Pq not just a directory path
for a database to be used by the
.Xr apropos 1
and
.Xr whatis 1
commands.
.El
.Pp
Multiple specifications for all types of lines are cumulative and the
entries are used in the order listed in the file; multiple entries may
be listed per line, as well.
.Pp
Empty lines or lines whose first non-whitespace character is a hash mark
.Pq Sq #
are ignored.
.Sh FILES
.Bl -tag -width /etc/man.conf -compact
.It Pa /etc/man.conf
standard manual directory search path
.El
.Sh EXAMPLES
Given the following
.Nm man.conf
file:
.Bd -literal -offset indent
_version	BSD.2
_subdir		cat1 cat3 cat2
_suffix		.0
_build		.[1-9]	/usr/bin/mandoc %s
_build		.tbl	/usr/bin/mandoc %s
_default	/usr/share/man/
sect3		/usr/share/man/{old/,}cat3
.Ed
.Pp
By default, the command
.Dq Li man mktemp
will search for
.Dq mktemp.\*(Ltany_digit\*(Gt
and
.Dq mktemp.tbl
in the directories
.Pa /usr/share/man/cat1 ,
.Pa /usr/share/man/cat3 ,
and
.Pa /usr/share/man/cat2 ,
in that order.
If on a machine of type
.Dq vax ,
the subdirectory
.Dq vax
in each directory would be searched as well,
before the rest of the directory was searched.
.Pp
If
.Dq mktemp.tbl
was found first, the command
.Dq /usr/bin/mandoc mktemp.tbl
would be run to build a man page for display to the user.
.Pp
The command
.Dq Li man sect3 mktemp
would search the directories
.Pa /usr/share/man/old/cat3
and
.Pa /usr/share/man/cat3 ,
in that order, for the mktemp manual page.
If a subdirectory with the same name as the current machine type
existed in any of them, it would be searched as well, before each
of them were searched.
.Sh SEE ALSO
.Xr apropos 1 ,
.Xr machine 1 ,
.Xr man 1 ,
.Xr whatis 1 ,
.Xr whereis 1 ,
.Xr fnmatch 3 ,
.Xr glob 3