# phpman > info > nroff

[NROFF(1)](https://www.chedong.com/phpMan.php/man/NROFF/1/markdown)                    General Commands Manual                   [NROFF(1)](https://www.chedong.com/phpMan.php/man/NROFF/1/markdown)

NAME
       nroff - use groff to format documents for TTY devices

SYNOPSIS
       nroff [-CchipStUv] [-dcs] [-Mdir] [-mname] [-nnum] [-olist] [-rcn]
             [-Tname] [-Wwarning] [-wwarning] [file ...]

       nroff --help

       nroff -v
       nroff --version

DESCRIPTION
       nroff formats documents written in the [roff(7)](https://www.chedong.com/phpMan.php/man/roff/7/markdown) language for typewriter-
       like devices such as terminal emulators.

       GNU  nroff  emulates the traditional Unix nroff command using [groff(1)](https://www.chedong.com/phpMan.php/man/groff/1/markdown).
       nroff generates output via [grotty(1)](https://www.chedong.com/phpMan.php/man/grotty/1/markdown), groff's TTY output device,  which
       needs to know the character encoding scheme used by the terminal.  Con-
       sequently, acceptable arguments to the -T  option  are  ascii,  latin1,
       utf8,   and   cp1047;   any   others   are  ignored.   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 [locale(1)](https://www.chedong.com/phpMan.php/man/locale/1/markdown) program, then checks several locale-related
       environment variables; see "ENVIRONMENT", below.  If all of the forego-
       ing fail, -Tascii is implied.

       Whitespace is not permitted between an option and its argument.  The -h
       and -c options are equivalent to grotty's options -h (using tabs in the
       output)  and  -c (using the old output scheme instead of SGR escape se-
       quences).  The -d, -C, -i, -M, -m, -n, -o, -r, -w, and -W options  have
       the  effect  described in [troff(1)](https://www.chedong.com/phpMan.php/man/troff/1/markdown).  In addition, nroff ignores -e, -q,
       and -s (which are not implemented in troff).  The options -p (pic),  -t
       (tbl),  -S (safer), and -U (unsafe) are passed to groff.  -v and --ver-
       sion show version information, while --help displays a  usage  message;
       all exit afterward.

ENVIRONMENT
       GROFF_TYPESETTER
              specifies the default output device for groff.

       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.

       LC_ALL
       LC_CTYPE
       LANG
       LESSCHARSET
              are  pattern-matched in this order for standard character encod-
              ings supported by groff in the event no -T option is  given  and
              GROFF_TYPESETTER is unset.

NOTES
       Character   definitions   in   the  file  /usr/share/groff/1.22.4/tmac/
       tty-char.tmac are loaded to replace unrepresentable glyphs.

SEE ALSO
       [groff(1)](https://www.chedong.com/phpMan.php/man/groff/1/markdown), [troff(1)](https://www.chedong.com/phpMan.php/man/troff/1/markdown), [grotty(1)](https://www.chedong.com/phpMan.php/man/grotty/1/markdown), [locale(1)](https://www.chedong.com/phpMan.php/man/locale/1/markdown), [roff(7)](https://www.chedong.com/phpMan.php/man/roff/7/markdown)

groff 1.22.4                     23 March 2022                        [NROFF(1)](https://www.chedong.com/phpMan.php/man/NROFF/1/markdown)