man [ part] topic
where topic is the name of the topic described in the manual (a command name or a filename) and part specifies the section of the manual (1 through to 8). If no part is specified, man searches all reference sections (giving preference to commands over functions) and prints the first manual page it finds for the topic given. Usually, ordinary users are interested in part 1, commands and utilities. Part 2 is system calls, part 3 library routines, part 8 is the System Administration Reference Manual.
Man pages are normally displayed using the more command. more displays one page at a time and allows you after each page the option to enter commands to control what it does next. For example, you page forward with the space bar and exit from man with q (for quit). You can search for patterns by entering /pattern. Enter simply / to find additional instances of the pattern in the text. If there is more than one entry for the selected topic, man will prompt for a second q to quit, or space to continue with the first page of the next entry.
man includes Unix system commands and utilities, but may not include shell commands. Help for shell commands can be obtained with man csh or man sh then /pattern where pattern is the shell command you want information on.
You can often get the format of a command by entering the command with an
illegal option (try / or ? or .). For example,
ls -/
ls: illegal option - - /
usage: ls -Rad CLHxmnlogrtucpFbqisf [files]
You can display information about man with:
man man
The man command can also be used to locate commands by keyword lookup:
man -k keyword
will display the man page name, section number in the Unix documentation and a short description, for each man page whose NAME line contains keyword. On some systems this facility is also available via the command:
apropos keyword