Manual Page for Man

If you ever feel useless, remember there is a manual page for man MAN(1) Manual pager utils MAN(1) NAME man - an interface to the system reference manuals SYNOPSIS man [-ahkKwtW] [-C file] [-M path] [-P pager] [-B browser] [-H htmlpager] [-S section] [-m system] [-f] [-l] [-w] [-W] [--] [section] page ... man -k [apropos options] regexp ... man -K [man options] [pattern ...] man -f [whatis options] page ... man -? [man options] page ... DESCRIPTION man the system's manual pager. Each page argument given to man is normally the name of a program, utility or function. The manual page associated with each of these arguments is then found and displayed. A section, if provided, will direct man to look only in that section of the manual. The default action is to search in all of the available sections in a pre-defined order (see DEFAULTS), and to show only the first page found, even if page exists in several sections. The table below shows the section numbers of the manual followed by the types of pages they contain. 1 Executable programs or shell commands 2 System calls (functions provided by the kernel) 3 Library calls (functions within program libraries) 4 Special files (usually found in /dev) 5 File formats and conventions, e.g. /etc/passwd 6 Games 7 Miscellaneous (including macro pages and conventions), e.g. man(7), groff(7) 8 System administration commands (usually only for root) 9 Kernel routines [Non standard] A manual page consists of several sections. Conventional section names include NAME, SYNOPSIS, CONFIGURATION, DESCRIPTION, OPTIONS, EXIT STATUS, RETURN VALUE, ERRORS, ENVIRONMENT, FILES, VERSIONS, CONFORMING TO, NOTES, BUGS, EXAMPLE, AUTHORS, and SEE ALSO. The following conventions apply to the SYNOPSIS section and can be used as a guide in other sections. Manual page man(1) line 1 (press h for help or q to quit)

The meme pairs the phrase “If you ever feel useless” with a screenshot of the Unix manual page for the `man` command. The joke is that even the command whose purpose is to display manuals has a manual, so nobody—and especially not “man”—is truly useless. It is typically sent as a nerdy, encouraging reaction to someone feeling unneeded.

• @dev_meme / 2748 2021-02-14