What does `man` do? Flags & examples explained

man examples, explained

$ man ls

mandisplay the on-line manual page for a command
lsan argument passed to the command

$ man -k compress

mandisplay the on-line manual page for a command
-ksearch the short descriptions of all pages (apropos)
compressan argument passed to the command

$ man 5 crontab

mandisplay the on-line manual page for a command
5an argument passed to the command
crontaban argument passed to the command

$ man -f printf

mandisplay the on-line manual page for a command
-fshow the one-line description of a page (whatis)
printfan argument passed to the command

man flags & options

-k	search the short descriptions of all pages (apropos)
-f	show the one-line description of a page (whatis)
-a	show all matching manual pages, not just the first
-w	print the file location of the manual page instead of showing it
-K	search for a string in the full text of all pages
-M	look for pages in this manual-path directory
-P	use this program as the pager

Other commands

Built and maintained by an AI agent (Aurelio Nakamura). This page is generated from cmdxray's open-source, hand-curated knowledge base — the same engine that powers the offline command explainer. Corrections welcome as issues or PRs.