MANUAL PAGES(5)             BSD File Formats Manual            MANUAL PAGES(5)

NAME
     manpages -- An introduction to manual pages

DESCRIPTION
     Manual pages (often shortened to "man pages") are a means of providing documentation on the command
     line.  Most manual pages describe low-level programming interfaces, command-line tools, and file for-mats. formats.
     mats.

     This manual page is intended to help you learn about manual pages, their purpose, their style, and
     their overall layout so that you can better take advantage of the content that they provide.

MANUAL PAGE STYLE
     Because manual pages are written by software engineers from many different companies and organizations
     around the world, the format of these manual pages varies somewhat from page to page, as does the
     style.

     In general, however, manual pages are written to be as concise as possible.  While this makes them a
     somewhat difficult place to start as a new programmer, this is intentional.  They are not intended to
     replace conceptual documentation such as books on programming.  They are intended primarily to provide
     a quick reference for people who are already somewhat familiar with the subject.

     Some manual pages provide links to outside websites.  You can often find more thorough conceptual docu-mentation, documentation,
     mentation, sample code, and other useful information at these websites.

MANUAL PAGE SECTIONS
     The manual is divided into sections.  Each section covers a particular subject area.  The major manual
     page sections are:

     1      General User Commands

     2      System Calls

     3      Library Routines (*)

     4      Special Files and Sockets

     5      File formats and Conventions

     6      Games and Fun Stuff

     7      Miscellaneous Documentation

     8      System Administration

     9      Kernel and Programming Style

     n      Tcl/Tk

     (*) Excludes library routines that merely wrap system calls. Those routines are covered in section 2.

     The majority of commonly used commands appear in sections 1 and 8 of the manual, while most programming
     information is found in sections 2 and 3.

     These subject areas may be further subdivided.  For example, manual section 3 was originally intended
     to hold documentation in the standard C library but has been expanded to include functions in other C
     language libraries, such as section 3ssl (OpenSSL functions).

     Section 3 has even been expanded to include other programming languages.  For example, section 3pm con-tains contains
     tains documentation for Perl modules).

     It is common to have multiple manual pages with the same name but different section numbers.  This usu-ally usually
     ally occurs when a command shares a name with a C function or system call that does something very sim-ilar. similar.
     ilar.  To avoid any confusion, manual pages are commonly referred to in the form name(number), in which
     the number is the section number.

MANUAL PAGE TOOLS
     You can read manual pages in a number of ways.  The most common way to read manual pages is with the
     man(1) tool from the command line.  For example, typing "man man" displays the manual page for the man
     tool.

     If there are multiple manual pages with the same name but different section numbers (for example,
     open(1) and open(2)), you can specify a section number when requesting the page.  For example, the com-mand command
     mand "man 2 open" displays the manual page for the "open" system call from section 2 of the manual.

     You can also read manual pages from within Xcode by choosing the "Open man page..." option in the Help
     menu, or within your choice of web browsers by going to <http://developer.apple.com/documentation/Dar-
     win/Reference/ManPages/.

     In addition to searching for manual pages on the web, the manual page architecture also provides two
     useful command-line tools for searching the manual pages: whatis and apropos.

     The whatis(1) command searches the manual page headings (command and function names) for a word.  If
     that word appears in its entirety, it shows the matching name and abstract. For example, typing "whatis
     man" returns results for man and man.conf. This is mostly of interest if you want to read an abstract
     for a particular command.

     The apropos(1) command is a much more user-friendly version of whatis.  It searches the same database,
     but searches the manual page abstracts as well as the titles.  Unlike the whatis command, apropos
     returns results for partial word matches.

     NOTE: Both apropos and whatis depend on a database to provide information.  This database is updated
     periodically.  On fresh installations, however, it may not be present.  If apropos and whatis are not
     working correctly, you should run the following command as an admin user:

           sudo /usr/libexec/makewhatis

     This will rebuild the database.  Enter your admin password when prompted.

MANUAL PAGE STRUCTURE
     Manual pages do not have a fixed structure.  However, most manual pages do follow certain conventions.

     Manual pages typically begin with a NAME section, which contains the name of a command or function and
     a short abstract.

     Next, manual pages typically include a SYNOPSIS section, which describes how to use the command or
     function.  For functions, the syntax generally contains the necessary include directives, followed by
     the function declarations themselves.  For commands, the syntax is explained in MANUAL PAGE SYNTAX.

     After the SYNOPSIS section, you will generally find a DESCRIPTION section, followed by an OPTIONS sec-tion section
     tion (which explains the flags from the SYNOPSIS section.

     You may find sections such as ENVIRONMENT HISTORY, BUGS, CONFORMING TO, AUTHOR, and COPYRIGHT.

     Finally, most manual pages end with a section called SEE ALSO, which includes the names and section
     numbers of related manual pages.

MANUAL PAGE SYNTAX
     In manual page syntax, anything in a normal text font is required text.  Anything in a boldface font is
     a flag or a subcommand.  Anything underlined is a user-specified argument such as a filename.

     Any argument surrounded by brackets is considered to be optional.  For example, [ filename ] would
     indicate an optional filename argument.

     Flags, arguments, or subcommands separated by a vertical separator (|) are mutually exclusive.  For
     example, if -a turns on an option and -b turns off the option, the syntax for this command might be -a
     | -b.

     In some cases, you may even see entire groups of arguments wrapped with brackets and separated by a
     vertical separator. This is one way of showing that a command has more than one valid syntax.  In other
     manual pages, this is expressed by having multiple lines in the synopsis, each of which begins with the
     command name.  The separated format is more common (and more readable), but is not always possible for
     commands with particularly complex syntax.

     Finally, the most important notational convention is the use of the ellipsis (...).  This indicates
     that additional arguments may be added at this point.  Depending on the author, you may see this writ-ten written
     ten in one of two ways:

     argument [ argument... ]

     argument...

SEE ALSO
     For more information on manual pages, see man(1), intro(1), intro(2), intro(3), intro(5), intro(7),
     intro(8), intro(9), and the developer documentation website at <http://developer.apple.com/documenta-
     tion/Darwin/Reference/ManPages/.

Mac OS X                        April 26, 2007                        Mac OS X