The “man” is a short term for a manual page. In Unix-like operating systems such as Linux, man is an interface to view the system’s reference manual.
But generally [option(s)] are not used. The only keyword is written as an argument.
For example,
man ls How Output is Displayed in Command Shell
A man displays his output through a pager. A pager is a program that displays its output one screenful at a time, which means the whole text doesn’t appear at once and there is no option to scroll down the page.
A colon at the bottom displays the end of the on-screen page. To go to the next page you can use ? space bar’ or ‘f’ and to go the backward page you can use ‘b’.
To exit from the on-screen page use ‘q’ and you will be directed to the shell program. And for help press ‘h’.
The man command provides a user manual of any commands or utilities you can run in the Terminal, including the name, description, and options.
It consists of nine sections:
- Executable programs or shell commands
- System calls
- Library calls
- Games
- Special files
- File formats and conventions
- System administration commands
- Kernel routines
- Miscellaneous