How can I make the man command not use a pager?

Question

How can I force the man command to not use a pager, and instead output the whole manpage at once and keep all highlighting?

If I use man -P cat or man | cat, I lose highlighting.

@Slaks: You mean the answer isn't "Buy him a blackberry"? – mbarnett Dec 24 '09 at 21:22 — mbarnett, Dec 24 '09 at 21:22
Ops! Did not read it in this way :))) – Dec 24 '09 at 21:29 — , Dec 24 '09 at 21:29

score 8 · Accepted Answer · answered Dec 25 '09 at 00:08

Long reading of manuals for man, less, groff and grotty finally gave me answer

Highlighting by default is made using backspace sequences: c\bc => bold c, _\bc => underlined c. But if output as is using cat as pager just outputs plain c in both cases. Also blank lines are squeezed, so to do all this, pager must be set to ul | cat -s.

Pager can be set in many ways:

using MANPAGER or PAGER variables (MANPAGER is better as PAGER affects not only man command)
```
export MANPAGER='ul | cat -s'
```
in man.conf
```
PAGER       ul | cat -s
```

using -P parameter

cat -P 'ul | cat -s' …

or

alias man='man -P "ul | cat -s"'

+1, but I only need to use 'ul' as my pager to dump the output to the console with highlighting. I.e. `man -P ul `. Ubuntu 12.04.2. — G-Wiz, Jul 17 '13 at 03:52

score 3 · Answer 2 · answered Dec 24 '09 at 21:41

3

man man

...
    PAGER          A program to use for interactively delivering
                        man's  output  to  the  screen.   If not set,
                        `more -s' is used.  See more(1).

Which means the pager is regulated by PAGER env. variable, Thus just define PAGER as

setenv PAGER cat

and enjoy.

answered Dec 24 '09 at 21:41

Moisei

141
4

Why the downvote? This may not be the optimal solution, but it's not incorrect. Try it: `$ PAGER=cat man foobar`. – bcat Dec 24 '09 at 21:44
Isn't using `cat` as a pager essentially the same thing as not using a pager at all? – bcat Dec 24 '09 at 21:46
The question is about **not** using a pager and this without loosing highlighting. – Pascal Thivent Dec 24 '09 at 21:47
When I try this approach, I lose highlighting (on Mac OS X and Ubuntu). – Brian Campbell Dec 24 '09 at 23:55
i also lose highlighting. as a comment in another answer points out, `man -P ul` or `PAGER=ul man` works. TIL about ul… – flying sheep Feb 19 '14 at 09:28

score 1 · Answer 3 · answered Dec 24 '09 at 21:47

1

Alternatively, there's always the -P switch:

man -P cat foo

answered Dec 24 '09 at 21:47

amphetamachine

1,668
2
12
15

I already sad that with `-P cat` I use highlighting – tig Dec 24 '09 at 23:43
I checked my theory with man -P cat man |tee foo.txt ; less -R foo.txt. The formatting is still there; it just doesn't show up in the command window. – amphetamachine Jan 04 '10 at 22:55

score 1 · Answer 4 · answered Dec 24 '09 at 21:57

This is not exactly what you want (you won't get the output in the console) but you could generate a dvi file with the content of a manual as explained in man's man:

man -l -Tdvi ./foo.1x.gz > ./foo.1x.dvi
This command will decompress and format the nroff source manual page ./foo.1x.gz into a device independent (dvi) file. The redi‐ rection is necessary as the -T flag causes output to be directed to stdout with no pager. The output could be viewed with a program such as xdvi or further processed into PostScript using a program such as dvips.

I've just tested this and opened the dvi file with evince: the highlighting is not lost.

man on mac has no -l and -T params – tig Dec 24 '09 at 23:46 — tig, Dec 24 '09 at 23:46

How can I make the man command not use a pager?

4 Answers4