Function: manual-entry

manual-entry is a function alias and interactive for man, defined in man.el.gz.

Signature

(manual-entry MAN-ARGS)

Documentation

Get a Un*x manual page and put it in a buffer.

This command is the top-level command in the man package. It runs a Un*x command to retrieve and clean a manpage in the background and places the results in a Man-mode browsing buffer. The variable Man-width defines the number of columns in formatted manual pages. The buffer is displayed immediately. The variable Man-notify-method defines how the buffer is displayed. If a buffer already exists for this man page, it will be displayed without running the man command.

For a manpage from a particular section, use either of the following. "cat(1)" is how cross-references appear and is passed to man as "1 cat".

    cat(1)
    1 cat

To see manpages from all sections related to a subject, use an
"all pages" option (which might be "-a" if it's not the
default), then step through with Man-next-manpage (M-n (Man-next-manpage)) etc. Add to Man-switches to make this option permanent.

    -a chmod

An explicit filename can be given too. Use -l if it might otherwise look like a page name.

    /my/file/name.1.gz
    -l somefile.1

An "apropos" query with -k gives a buffer of matching page names or descriptions. The pattern argument is usually an
"grep -E" style regexp.

    -k pattern

Note that in some cases you will need to use C-q (quoted-insert) to quote the SPC character in the above examples, because this command attempts to auto-complete your input based on the installed manual pages.

If default-directory is remote, and Man-support-remote-systems is non-nil, this command formats the man page on the remote system. A prefix argument reverses the value of Man-support-remote-systems for the current invocation.

Probably introduced at or before Emacs version 1.1.

Key Bindings

Aliases

manual-entry