Amiga Unix — 68040 · 68060

Manual pages › General commands (1)

man(1)

display a manual page, from the add-on packages or from the stock system

Package: amxbase, added for amigaux.

This package comes with every 1.1 install; without it, man is the original one: see man-original(1).

Also by this name: man(1A), Amiga-specific commands · man(7B), Document macros

man - display a manual page, from the add-on packages or from the stock system

man [ -a ] [ section ] name ...
man -k keyword ...
man -f name ...

man shows the manual page for each name. It reaches two sets of pages: those of the add-on packages, in /opt/amix/man, and the system's own, which it leaves to the stock /usr/bin/man.

When only one set has a page for name, that page is shown. When both have one, the page of a command (sections 1, 1M and 8) is the page of the program your PATH runs: if that program is a stock one (outside /opt/amix and /usr/amix), the stock page is shown, and otherwise the package's. So with the stock directories first on PATH, man tar describes the stock tar, the one that tar runs. When a package has replaced the stock program itself, and lists it in /opt/amix/man/replaces.d, the package's page for it is shown instead. A page in any other section is the package's. -a shows both pages.

With a section (a section number such as 1 or 3, or the name of a section directory) only that section is searched. Without one, the sections are tried in the order 1, 1m, 8, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, then any other.

A page is formatted with tbl, eqn, nroff -man and col, the same way the stock man formats a page, and shown through the pager named by PAGER, by default /usr/bin/more, when the output is a terminal.

Show every page for name: the one man would choose first, then the other (for a replaced stock program, the package's page, then the stock one).
List the pages whose index line contains keyword: the packages' lines first, then the stock index.
List the index lines for the page name, in the same order.

Any other option goes to the stock man unchanged.

/opt/amix/man/section/name
a package's page: plain troff with the -man macros. A page that is only the line .so path shows the page at path (an alias).
/opt/amix/man/whatis.d/package
the index lines of one package, in the stock whatis format:
name(section) names - description
/opt/amix/man/replaces.d/package
the stock programs a package replaced, one a line:
path section page
for example /usr/sbin/tar 1 heirloom-tar. When the program PATH runs is one of them, /opt/amix/man/section/page is its page. Lines that start with # are comments.
/var/opt/amix/catman/section/name
formatted pages kept to show them faster. Only a user who can write there (root) keeps them; a page is formatted again when its source is newer. The stock cache, /usr/catman, is never written for a package's page.
/usr/bin/man
the stock command, which this one calls; it is never changed.
/usr/share/man/whatis
the stock index, read to know whether a stock page exists.

the pager for terminal output.
passed to the stock man as it is, unless it points into /opt/amix; then it is dropped, with CATPATH, so that the stock man never caches a package's page in /usr/catman.

more(1), eqn(1), nroff(1), tbl(1)

This command is installed as /usr/amix/bin/man. /usr/amix/bin comes before /usr/bin on the login PATH; it holds only commands like this one, which pass every request they do not handle to the stock command of the same name.

30 October 2026 amix-base