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 2 3posix
          3pm 3perl 3am 5 4 9 6  7",  unless  overridden  by  the  SECTION
          directive in /etc/manpath.config.

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

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@ee.surrey.ac.uk).
   Fabrizio Polacco (fpolacco@debian.org).
   Colin Watson (cjwatson@debian.org).

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