man > catman(8)

CATMAN(8)                                Manual pager utils                                CATMAN(8)

NAME
       catman - create or update the pre-formatted manual pages

SYNOPSIS
       catman [-d?V] [-M path] [-C file] [section] ...

DESCRIPTION
       catman  is used to create an up to date set of pre-formatted manual pages known as cat pages.
       Cat pages are generally much faster to display than the original manual  pages,  but  require
       extra  storage  space.  The decision to support cat pages is that of the local administrator,
       who must provide suitable directories to contain them.

       The options available to catman are the manual page hierarchies and sections  to  pre-format.
       The default hierarchies are those specified as system hierarchies in the man-db configuration
       file,  and  the  default  sections are either the colon-delimited contents of the environment
       variable $MANSECT or the standard set compiled into man if $MANSECT is undefined.   Supplying
       catman with a set of whitespace-delimited section names will override both of the above.

       catman  makes  use  of  the  index database cache associated with each hierarchy to determine
       which files need to be formatted.

OPTIONS
       -d, --debug
              Print debugging information.

       -M path, --manpath=path
              Specify an alternate colon-delimited manual page hierarchy search path.   By  default,
              this is all paths indicated as system hierarchies in the man-db configuration file.

       -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
       MANSECT
              If  $MANSECT is set, its value is a colon-delimited list of sections and it is used to
              determine which manual sections to search and in what order.  The default is "1 n l  8
              3  0  2 3type 3posix 3pm 3perl 3am 5 4 9 6 7", unless overridden by the SECTION direc‐
              tive in /etc/manpath.config.

       MANPATH
              If $MANPATH is set, its value is interpreted as the colon-delimited manual page  hier‐
              archy search path to use.

              See the SEARCH PATH section of manpath(5) for the default behaviour and details of how
              this environment variable is handled.

FILES
       /etc/manpath.config
              man-db configuration file.

       /usr/man/index.(bt|db|dir|pag)
              A traditional global index database cache.

       /var/catman/index.(bt|db|dir|pag)
              An alternate or FSSTND compliant global index database cache.

SEE ALSO
       man(1), manpath(5), mandb(8)

AUTHOR
       Wilf. (G.Wilford AT ee.uk).
       Fabrizio Polacco (fpolacco AT debian.org).
       Colin Watson (cjwatson AT debian.org).

BUGS
       https://gitlab.com/man-db/man-db/-/issues
       https://savannah.nongnu.org/bugs/?group=man-db

2.12.0                                       2023-09-23                                    CATMAN(8)