CATMAN(8) Manual pager utils CATMAN(8)
NAME
catman - create or update the pre-formatted manual pages
SYNOPSIS
catman [-d?V] [-M path] [-C file] [section] ...
DESCRIPTION
catman is used to create an up to date set of pre-formatted manual pages
known as cat pages. Cat pages are generally much faster to display than
the original manual pages, but require extra storage space. The deci-
sion to support cat pages is that of the local administrator, who must
provide suitable directories to contain them.
The options available to catman are the manual page hierarchies and sec-
tions to pre-format. The default hierarchies are those specified as
system hierarchies in the man-db configuration file, and the default
sections are either the colon-delimited contents of the environment
variable $MANSECT or the standard set compiled into man if $MANSECT is
undefined. Supplying catman with a set of whitespace-delimited section
names will override both of the above.
catman makes use of the index database cache associated with each hier-
archy to determine which files need to be formatted.
OPTIONS
-d, --debug
Print debugging information.
-M path, --manpath=path
Specify an alternate colon-delimited manual page hierarchy search
path. By default, this is all paths indicated as system hierar-
chies in the man-db configuration file.
-C file, --config-file=file
Use this user configuration file rather than the default of
~/.manpath.
-?, --help
Print a help message and exit.
--usage
Print a short usage message and exit.
-V, --version
Display version information.
ENVIRONMENT
MANSECT
If $MANSECT is set, its value is a colon-delimited list of sec-
tions and it is used to determine which manual sections to search
and in what order. The default is "1 n l 8 3 0 2 3type 3posix
3pm 3perl 3am 5 4 9 6 7", unless overridden by the SECTION direc-
tive in /etc/manpath.config.
MANPATH
If $MANPATH is set, its value is interpreted as the colon-delim-
ited manual page hierarchy search path to use.
See the SEARCH PATH section of manpath(5) for the default behav-
iour and details of how this environment variable is handled.
FILES
/etc/manpath.config
man-db configuration file.
/usr/man/index.(bt|db|dir|pag)
A traditional global index database cache.
/var/catman/index.(bt|db|dir|pag)
An alternate or FSSTND compliant global index database cache.
SEE ALSO
man(1), manpath(5), mandb(8)
AUTHOR
Wilf. (G.Wilford@ee.surrey.ac.uk).
Fabrizio Polacco (fpolacco@debian.org).
Colin Watson (cjwatson@debian.org).
BUGS
https://gitlab.com/man-db/man-db/-/issues
https://savannah.nongnu.org/bugs/?group=man-db
2.13.1 2025-05-02 CATMAN(8)
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