Template:Man

{{{2}}} – Reference, The Single UNIX Specification, Version 4 from The Open Group

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To be used for inserting manual page links into articles on Unix topics.

Usage

Examples

In	Out
{{man|3|printf}}	printf – System Interfaces Reference, The Single UNIX Specification, Version 4 from The Open Group
{{man|3|printf|||inline}}	printf
{{man|3|printf|FreeBSD}}	printf(3) – FreeBSD Library Functions Manual
{{man|3|printf||formatted output conversion}}	printf: formatted output conversion – System Interfaces Reference, The Single UNIX Specification, Version 4 from The Open Group

Parameters

1. Manual section
2. Manual page name
3. Source (the name of a subpage in the Template:Man namespace e.g. FreeBSD. Leave blank for the current default.)
4. Page description
5. Style parameter; currently inline omits the attribution.

Available sources

Please add to this table as you write new sources!

Source	Example	Result
default	{{man|1|ls}}	ls – Shell and Utilities Reference, The Single UNIX Specification, Version 4 from The Open Group
die.net	{{man|1|ls|die.net}}	ls(1) – Linux User Commands Manual
Version 6 Unix	{{man|1|ls|v6}}	ls(1) – Version 6 Unix Programmer's Manual
Version 7 Unix	{{man|1|ls|v7}}	ls(1) – Version 7 Unix Programmer's Manual
Version 8 Unix	{{man|1|ls|v8}}	ls(1) – Version 8 Unix Programmer's Manual
4.2BSD	{{man|1|ls|4.2BSD}}	ls(1) – 4.2BSD General Commands Manual
4.3BSD	{{man|1|ls|4.3BSD}}	ls(1) – 4.3BSD General Commands Manual
4.3BSD-Reno	{{man|1|ls|4.3BSD-Reno}}	ls(1) – BSD General Commands Manual
4.4BSD-Lite2	{{man|1|ls|4.4BSD-Lite2}}	ls(1) – BSD General Commands Manual
9front	{{man|1|ls|9front}}	ls(1) – 9front manual page
Darwin	{{man|1|ls|Darwin}}	ls(1) – Darwin and macOS General Commands Manual
Debian	{{man|1|ls|Debian}}	ls(1) – Debian General Commands Manual
man.cx	{{man|8|iptables|man.cx|inline}}	iptables(8)
DragonFly BSD	{{man|1|ls|DragonFly BSD}}	ls(1) – DragonFly BSD General Commands Manual
FreeBSD	{{man|1|ls|FreeBSD}}	ls(1) – FreeBSD General Commands Manual
HP-UX	{{man|1|ls|HP-UX}}	ls(1) – HP-UX 11i User Commands Manual
Inferno	{{man|1|ls|Inferno}}	ls(1) – Inferno General commands Manual
IRIX	{{man|1|ls|IRIX}}	ls(1) – IRIX 6.5 User Commands Manual
Linux	{{man|7|epoll|Linux}}	epoll(7) – Linux Programmer's Manual – Overview, Conventions and Miscellanea
ManKier	{{man|1|ls|ManKier}}	ls(1) – Linux General Commands Manual
MirOS BSD	{{man|1|ls|MirOS BSD}}	ls(1) – MirOS BSD i386 General Commands Manual
NetBSD	{{man|1|ls|NetBSD}}	ls(1) – NetBSD General Commands Manual
OpenBSD	{{man|1|ls|OpenBSD}}	ls(1) – OpenBSD General Commands Manual
OpenSolaris	{{man|1|ls|OpenSolaris}}	ls(1) – illumos and OpenSolaris User Commands Reference Manual from latest Sun based OpenSolaris
perldoc	{{man|1|perlrun|perldoc}}	perlrun(1) – Perl Programming Documentation
Plan 9	{{man|1|ls|Plan 9}}	ls(1) – Plan 9 Programmer's Manual, Volume 1
Solaris	{{man|1|ls|Solaris}}	ls(1) – Solaris 11.4 User Commands Reference Manual
SUS	{{man|cu|ls|SUS}}	ls – Shell and Utilities Reference, The Single UNIX Specification, Version 4 from The Open Group
SUS6	{{man|sh|putmsg|SUS6}}	putmsg – System Interfaces Reference, The Single UNIX Specification, Version 3 from The Open Group

General recommendations

For most articles, it is preferable to cite SUS (if present) for standard, the FreeBSD page for history, and the Linux page for a relatively widespread form. Add other OS pages as needed.

There are several sources for Linux manual pages. Just use "Linux" which points to manned.org, which has up-to-date manpages collected from several Linux distributions (as well as FreeBSD); it will, by default, "try to get the latest and most-close-to-upstream version of a man page", which "will fetch the man page from any of the available systems". Do not go for die.net unless it's the only place where a page can be found, as the formatting is horrible and the pages are old.

Other sources

Occasionally you will come across manual pages for which writing a source is overkill. In this case you can use Template:man/format directly with a URL for formatting:

In	Out
{{man/format|1|dbx|http://.../dbx.1.html|source-level debugging tool|[[Sun Studio]] Developer's Manual}}	dbx(1): source-level debugging tool – Sun Studio Developer's Manual

The interface of Template:man/format is therefore externally visible and needs to be kept constant.

Hacking

Writing sources

A source takes three parameters:

1. Manual section
2. Manual page name
3. Output selector:
   • attrib for attribution
   • url for URL to page
   • display_section for section to display in parentheses.

See Template:Man/die.net for an example; see Template:Man/FreeBSD for a demonstration of varying the attribution by manual section.

Internals

Template:man handles choosing the default source and calling it for URL and attribution; the default source is Template:man/default, which is a template redirect currently to Template:man/SUS. Template:man/format actually formats the link and descriptions into a nice-looking link+auxilia in Unix style.

References

The above documentation is transcluded from Template:Man/doc. (edit | history)
Editors can experiment in this template's sandbox (create | mirror) and testcases (create) pages.
Add categories to the /doc subpage. Subpages of this template.

To be used for inserting manual page links into articles on Unix topics.

Template parameters[Edit template data]

This template prefers inline formatting of parameters.

Parameter		Description	Type	Status
Manual section	1	The section of the manual. e.g. if the manual page is 'ls(1)', the section is 1. Suggested values 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 Example 1	String	required
Manual page name	2	The name of the page you are referring to Example ls	String	required
Source	3	The name of a subpage in the 'Template:Man' namespace. Suggested values die.net Linux FreeBSD Darwin SUS Debian Default SUS Example FreeBSD	String	suggested
Page description	4	Will appear after the link to the man page	Content	optional
Style parameter	5	Currently "inline" omits the attribution Suggested values inline	String	optional