MANPATH(1) Manual pager utils MANPATH(1)
NAME
manpath - determine search path for manual pages
SYNOPSIS
manpath [-qgdc?V] [-m system[,...]] [-C file]
DESCRIPTION
If $MANPATH is set, manpath will simply display its contents and issue a
warning. If not, manpath will determine a suitable manual page hierar-
chy search path and display the results.
The colon-delimited path is determined using information gained from the
man-db configuration file – (/etc/manpath.config) and the user's envi-
ronment.
OPTIONS
-q, --quiet
Do not issue warnings.
-d, --debug
Print debugging information.
-c, --catpath
Produce a catpath as opposed to a manpath. Once the manpath is
determined, each path element is converted to its relative cat-
path.
-g, --global
Produce a manpath consisting of all paths named as "global"
within the man-db configuration file.
-m system[,...], --systems=system[,...]
If this system has access to other operating systems' manual hi-
erarchies, this option can be used to include them in the output
of manpath. To include NewOS's manual page hierarchies use the
option -m NewOS.
The system specified can be a combination of comma delimited op-
erating system names. To include the native operating system's
manual page hierarchies, the system name man must be included in
the argument string. This option will override the $SYSTEM envi-
ronment variable.
-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
MANPATH
If $MANPATH is set, manpath displays its value rather than deter-
mining it on the fly.
See the SEARCH PATH section of manpath(5) for the default behav-
iour and details of how this environment variable is handled.
SYSTEM If $SYSTEM is set, it will have the same effect as if it had been
specified as the argument to the -m option.
FILES
/etc/manpath.config man-db configuration file.
SEE ALSO
apropos(1), man(1), whatis(1)
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 MANPATH(1)
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