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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  deci‐
       sion 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 hier‐
       archies  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.

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

FILES
       /etc/man_db.conf
              man-db configuration file.

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


2.6.3                                                 2012-09-17                                            CATMAN(8)