(Or "man page") A part of
Unix's
extensive on-line documentation. To read a manual page, type
man [-s<section>] <page>
at a shell prompt, e.g. "man ftp" (the section number can
usually be omitted). Pages are traditionally referred to
using the notation "page(section)", e.g. ftp(1).
Under
SunOS (which is fairly typical), Section 1 covers
commands, 2 system calls, 3 C library routines, 4 devices
and networks, 5 file formats, 6 games and
demos, 7
miscellaneous, 8 system administration. Each section has an
introduction which can be obtained with, e.g., "man 2 intro".
Manual pages are stored as
nroff source files. Formatted
versions are also usually cached.
Unix manual page: man(1).
A Linux man gateway.
A Solaris man gateway.