nroff(1) General Commands Manual nroff(1)
Name
nroff - format documents with groff for TTY (terminal) devices
Synopsis
nroff [-bcCEhikpRStUVz] [-d ctext] [-d string=text] [-K fallback-
encoding] [-m macro-package] [-M macro-directory] [-n page-number]
[-o page-list] [-P postprocessor-argument] [-r cnumeric-
expression] [-r register=numeric-expression] [-T output-device]
[-w warning-category] [-W warning-category] [file ...]
nroff --help
nroff -v
nroff --version
Description
nroff formats documents written in the ]8;;man:groff(7)\groff(7)]8;;\ language for typewriter-
like devices such as terminal emulators. GNU nroff emulates the AT&T
nroff command using ]8;;man:groff(1)\groff(1)]8;;\. nroff generates output via ]8;;man:grotty(1)\grotty(1)]8;;\,
groff's terminal output driver, which needs to know the character encod-
ing scheme used by the device. Consequently, acceptable arguments to
the -T option are ascii, latin1, utf8, and cp1047; any others are ig-
nored. If neither the GROFF_TYPESETTER environment variable nor the -T
command-line option (which overrides the environment variable) specifies
a (valid) device, nroff consults the locale to select an appropriate
output device. It first tries the ]8;;man:locale(1)\locale(1)]8;;\ program, then checks sev-
eral locale-related environment variables; see section “Environment” be-
low. If all of the foregoing fail, -Tascii is implied.
The -b, -c, -C, -d, -E, -i, -m, -M, -n, -o, -r, -U, -w, -W, and -z op-
tions have the effects described in ]8;;man:troff(1)\troff(1)]8;;\. -c and -h imply “-P-c”
and “-P-h”, respectively; -c is also interpreted directly by troff. In
addition, this implementation ignores the AT&T nroff options -e, -q, and
-s (which are not implemented in groff). The options -k, -K, -p, -P,
-R, -t, and -S are documented in ]8;;man:groff(1)\groff(1)]8;;\. -V causes nroff to display
the constructed groff command on the standard output stream, but does
not execute it. -v and --version show version information about nroff
and the programs it runs, while --help displays a usage message; all
exit afterward.
Exit status
nroff exits with error status 2 if there was a problem parsing its argu-
ments, with status 0 if any of the options -V, -v, --version, or --help
were specified, and with the status of groff otherwise.
Environment
Normally, the path separator in environment variables ending with PATH
is the colon; this may vary depending on the operating system. For ex-
ample, Windows uses a semicolon instead.
GROFF_BIN_PATH
is a colon-separated list of directories in which to search for
the groff executable before searching in PATH. If unset, /usr/
bin is used.
GROFF_TYPESETTER
specifies the default output device for groff.
LC_ALL
LC_CTYPE
LANG
LESSCHARSET
are pattern-matched in this order for contents matching standard
character encodings supported by groff in the event no -T option
is given and GROFF_TYPESETTER is unset, or the values specified
are invalid.
Files
/usr/share/groff/1.23.0/tmac/tty-char.tmac
defines fallback definitions of roff special characters. These
definitions more poorly optically approximate typeset output than
those of tty.tmac in favor of communicating semantic information.
nroff loads it automatically.
Notes
Pager programs like ]8;;man:more(1)\more(1)]8;;\ and ]8;;man:less(1)\less(1)]8;;\ may require command-line options
to correctly handle some output sequences; see ]8;;man:grotty(1)\grotty(1)]8;;\.
See also
]8;;man:groff(1)\groff(1)]8;;\, ]8;;man:troff(1)\troff(1)]8;;\, ]8;;man:grotty(1)\grotty(1)]8;;\, ]8;;man:locale(1)\locale(1)]8;;\, ]8;;man:roff(7)\roff(7)]8;;\
groff 1.23.0 3 June 2025 nroff(1)
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