man

Package: WA2L/WinTools 1.2.10
Section: General Commands (1)
Updated: 11 August 2026
Index Return to Main Contents

 

NAME

man - display manual pages on console

 

SYNOPSIS

WA2LWinTools/bin/man [ -h | -i | -u | -V | [-p] -w | -m ]

man manpage

man -l [ select ]

man [ -r ] [ -s section ] [ -o [operating_system] ] manpage

man [ -r ] [ -s section ] [ -p ] manpage

man [ -r ] -f manpage

 

AVAILABILITY

WA2L/WinTools

 

DESCRIPTION

display manual pages on Windows console.

When started thru a double click the manpage to be displayed can be entered interactively, when started on the command line the manpage is entered as a command line option.

When the manpage is entered interactively you can use the arrow keys to recall manual pages that you have already entered in the current man run.

Hint: The man pages are also distributed as HTML and PDF files and are located in the man/ directory.

 

OPTIONS

-h
usage message.

-i
install the man command as menu point 'man' to the 'Send To' context menu in 'Windows Explorer'.

-u
uninstall the man shortcut from the 'Send To' context menu in 'Windows Explorer'.

-w
print current MANPATH, MANSECT and MANMAPS settings, whereas only the existing directories are printed.

-m
list mapped manual pages as defined in the man.map configuration file.

-l [ select ]
list all online available operating_systems manual pages.

-V
print program version.

-s section
man page section. The section has only to be specified, if a manual page appears in more then one section. Available default sections in WA2L/WinTools are 1, 1m, 3 and 4.

-o operating_system
query the operating system manual pages directly online (from https://manned.org/ or https://man.freebsd.org/).

The operating_system system manual pages can only be queried if a direct internet connection is possible. Probably the proxy(3) command might enable the use of the -o option. However, this is often not helpful in corporate environments, and using a browser likely remains the only option.

Manual pages for operating_systems from manned.org are: all, arch, centos, debian, fedora, freebsd, netbsd, openbsd, ubuntu
and from freebsd.org are: darwin, dragonfly, freebsd-current, freebsd-ports, freebsd-release, freebsd-release-ports, freebsd-stable, hpux, irix, linux, macos, macosx, minix, opendarwin, openindiana, opensuse, osf1, plan9, rocky, slackware, solaris, sunos, sunos4, sunos5, suse, true64, ultrix, v7, v7man, x11, xfree86.

When specifying no operating_system or specifying all, manned.org is queried.

If a non-existing operating_system is specified it defaults to freebsd-release-ports on man.freebsd.org.

-r
print raw unformatted source manual page.

-p
restrict manual page search/display only to WA2L/WinTools manual pages independent of additional MANPATH, MANMAPS and MANSECT settings.

-f
the specified manpage is a file to be displayed in man.

manpage
manual page to be displayed.

 

ENVIRONMENT

%MANPATH%
semicolon separated list of manual page paths.

The manual path defined here is pre-pended to the setting in the etc/man.cfg configuration file.

%MANMAPS%
semicolon (;) separated list of custom man.map locations.

 

EXIT STATUS

0
no specific error.

4
usage message displayed.

5
version message displayed.

7
information listed (-w, -m, or -l).

 

FILES

etc/man.cfg
optional configuration file of man. See man.cfg(4) for more information.

man/
location of the man pages, HTML and PDF files.

man/man.map
mapfile to map certain manual pages.

var/cache/webget/
cached online manual pages.

var/man/
directory for user own manual pages.

This directory contents will not be affected by WA2L/WinTools updates.

var/man/man.map
mapfile to map certain (user own) manual pages.

var/scripts/*/man/
directory for manual pages that come with package-like scripts installed in var/scripts/<DIRECTORY>/ This directories are automatically searched by the man command as long as no <DIRECTORY>/.no-path file exists.
var/scripts/*/man/man.map
manual page maps that come with package-like scripts installed in var/scripts/<DIRECTORY>/ This directories are automatically searched by the man command as long as no <DIRECTORY>/.no-path file exists.

 

EXAMPLES

-

 

SEE ALSO

wintoolsintro(1), apropos(1), less(1), man.cfg(4), man.map(4), manvi(1), whatis(1), https://manned.org/, https://man.freebsd.org/, https://wa2l-edrc.sourceforge.net/manuals/man4/mandir.4.html

 

NOTES

-

 

BUGS

-

 

VERSION

1.0.59++

 

AUTHOR

man was developed by Christian Walther. Send suggestions and bug reports to wa2l@users.sourceforge.net .

 

COPYRIGHT

Copyright © 2021 Christian Walther

This is free software; see WA2LWinTools/man/COPYING for copying conditions. There is ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY; not even for MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.


 

Index

NAME
SYNOPSIS
AVAILABILITY
DESCRIPTION
OPTIONS
ENVIRONMENT
EXIT STATUS
FILES
EXAMPLES
SEE ALSO
NOTES
BUGS
VERSION
AUTHOR
COPYRIGHT

This document was created by man2html, using the manual pages.
Time: 15:22:14 GMT, August 12, 2026