Man Pages
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Man pages (abbreviation for "manual pages") are extensive documentation that comes with almost all UNIX-like operating systems. The command used to display them is man.
Accessing man pages
To display man page you can run the command man followed by the name of the man page.
user $ man ip
Here we view man page for the ip command that comes with sys-apps/iproute2.
Section numbers
Man pages are sorted by section number. You can specify section number after man command.
user $ man 1 ip
Man pages are sorted into 8 separate sections.
| Section Number | Description |
1. |
General commands |
2. |
System calls |
3. |
Function calls |
4. |
Special files |
5. |
Configuration files |
6. |
Games |
7. |
Miscellaneous |
8. |
System administration commands |
Searching man pages
You can search man pages with -k option.
user $ man -k ip
To do wider search by matching keyword to whole articles you can use -K option.
user $ man -K wlan