catman.1m (2010 09)

c
catman(1M) catman(1M)
NAME
catman - create cat and whatis files for online manpages
SYNOPSIS
/usr/sbin/catman
[-A alt-path ][-p][
-m][-n][-w][-z][sections ]
DESCRIPTION
The
catman command creates the formatted versions of the online manpages from
nroff-compatible
source files. Each manpage in the
man*.Z
and man* directories is examined, and those whose formatted
versions are missing or out-of-date are recreated.
catman
formats the most recent of the entries,
compresses it, and puts it into the appropriate
cat*.Z directory.
If any changes are made,
catman recreates the
/usr/share/lib/whatis
database. By default, the
/usr/share/lib/whatis
database is overwritten. If the
MANPATH environment variable is set to a
nondefault set of paths, the old database file is saved in
/usr/share/lib/whatis.old
so that, if
desired, the system administrator may merge them together.
By default,
catman searches the man*.Z and man*
subdirectories under the following directories:
/usr/share/man
/usr/contrib/man
/usr/local/man
If MANPATH is set in the environment, the directories given in MANPATH are checked instead of the
default. See environ (5) for a description of the MANPATH environment variable.
Before running
catman, remove any existing cat* directories. If the -z option is used, cat*.Z
direc-
tories should be removed instead. If both
cat*.Z and cat* directories exist, man(1) updates both
directories and more space is used.
Any command-line parameters not starting with
- are interpreted as a list of manpage sections (direc-
tories) to search. For example:
catman 123
restricts updating to manpage sections 1, 2, and 3 (directories man1, man2, and man3).
Options
catman supports the following options:
-m Create a merged /usr/share/lib/whatis
database; i.e., information on new
manpage entries (added since the last time
catman was run) is merged into the
current database rather than overwriting it. Ignored if selected with the -n option.
-n Prevent creation of /usr/share/lib/whatis
.
-p Print what would be done instead of doing it.
-w Cause only the /usr/share/lib/whatis database to be created. No manpage
reformatting is done.
-z Put the formatted entries in the cat* directories rather than in the cat*.Z direc-
tories.
-A alt-path Perform actions based on the given alternate root. With this option, alt-path will be
prefixed to all directory paths, including default paths, the paths defined by MAN-
PATH, and the path to /usr/share/lib/whatis.
EXTERNAL INFLUENCES
Environment Variables
MANPATH defines parent directories to be used when searching man* and man*.Z directories.
WARNINGS
If unformatted manpages (those in the
../man* subdirectories) have been removed since the last time
catman was run, information in the /usr/share/lib/whatis database may be lost. The -m option
may be used to override this, but may result in repeated lines in the database for the same manpage.
EXAMPLES
Create uncompressed
cat* files for sections 1 and 1m of the manual, but don’t create the
/usr/share/lib/whatis database:
HP-UX 11i Version 3: September 2010 − 1 − Hewlett-Packard Company 1