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Search Man page on https://man.cx

Introduced in the early days of Unix, man pages (short for “manual pages”) are documentation files that provide detailed information about various Unix commands, system calls, library functions, and file formats. They serve as a primary source of documentation for Unix-based operating systems, offering descriptions, usage examples, command syntax, options, and related information for each command or function. Man pages are typically accessed through the command-line interface using the `man` command followed by the name of the command or function. They are organized into sections, with each section focusing on a specific category of commands or topics, such as user commands, system calls, library functions, and file formats. Man pages play a crucial role in helping users understand and effectively utilize the vast array of Unix commands and functions available, providing essential guidance for system administration, programming, and troubleshooting tasks.

Snippet from Wikipedia: Man page

A man page (short for manual page) is a form of software documentation found on Unix and Unix-like operating systems. Topics covered include programs, system libraries, system calls, and sometimes local system details. The local host administrators can create and install manual pages associated with the specific host. A manual end user may invoke a documentation page by issuing the man command followed by the name of the item for which they want the documentation. These manual pages are typically requested by end users, programmers and administrators doing real time work but can also be formatted for printing.

By default, man typically uses a formatting program such as nroff with a macro package or mandoc, and also a terminal pager program such as more or less to display its output on the user's screen.

Man pages are often referred to as an online form of software documentation, even though the man command does not require internet access. The environment variable MANPATH often specifies a list of directory paths to search for the various documentation pages. Manual pages date back to the times when printed documentation was the norm.

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“Have you ever wanted to check a manual page for a tool you hadn't installed on the current machine? Well, it happened to me various times. There are some manpage interfaces available on the net, but they all just provide access to the GNU tools or maybe to the tools installed on the host, but they are always missing some pages. So I thought, why isn't there a page with all manpages? So I just built one.”

“Well okay not all, but a lot. In fact, I extracted all the manpages from all available packages in the Debian testing distribution, plus some pages from other sources. This makes a total of 216768 available manpages (including translations).”

“Just enter the name of the page you want in the inputbox at the top of the page. You can add a section number (in parentheses) if you want. But you can simply use the fast to type URL man.cx/pagename in your browser's addressbar.”

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