How to read a .man file not on manpath?

Asked 1/12, 2011 at 2:40 Answered 10/12, 2019 at 23:26

How do I read a .man file that's not on my manpath? I know I had a command for this, but now I don't remember, and I can't find the right switch in the man pages for man.

Inductor answered 1/12, 2011 at 2:40 Comment(0)

You can try to read your file by doing

man path_to_file

as man will treat the given argument as a file if it finds a slash / in it. For instance

man ./my_test

will open the my_test file, while

man my_test

will look in the standard manual for the given command.

Drily answered 1/12, 2011 at 11:14 Comment(4)

After an update (man is now v 1.6f), this doesn't work anymore. I guess it's back to nroff. Annoying, I liked this solution so much better :( – Inductor 27/4, 2012 at 22:41

You can try to read your file by doing man path_to_file, as man will treat the given argument as a file if it finds a slash / in it. For instance man ./my_test will open the my_test file, while man my_test will look in the standard manual for the given command. – Drily 29/4, 2012 at 13:55

@Inductor I forgot to tag you in the last comment, hope it helps – Drily 1/5, 2012 at 7:36

Awesome, @IceCoder! I can't believe I didn't try that before :P Thank you so much :D – Inductor 1/5, 2012 at 14:30

If your man page is in a non-standard directory location, you can use:

man -M <path to man directory> mymanpage

You can also use the MANPATH environment variable:

MANPATH=<path to man directory> man mymanpage

If you are looking to format a standalone man page, use nroff:

nroff -man mymanpage.1 | less # or your favorite pager

Burgess answered 1/12, 2011 at 2:47 Comment(4)

Can't get man -M to work. man -M qnstrn.man gives me What manual page do you want?. man -M qnstrn.man qnstrn gives me No manual entry for qnstrn. nroff works, though. – Inductor 1/12, 2011 at 3:3

Ok, I edited the answer to distinguish between a non-standard directory and the case of a standalone page. – Burgess 1/12, 2011 at 3:8

To complete the last: nroff -man mymanpage.1 | pager (on Debian) or nroff -man mymanpage.1 | less (on all Unicies). – Jeep 13/7, 2014 at 19:45

I managed to view a roff man page I had in my clipboard in this way: xclip -selection clipboard -o | nroff -man | bat -l man – Saltworks 2/2, 2023 at 9:26

The option -l, --local-file, as documented in man man

man -l ./doc/mypage.1

Schweiz answered 10/12, 2019 at 23:26 Comment(1)

Most elegant solution here, especially since you no longer need the ./ in front of relative paths if you use this option – Weslee 14/2, 2023 at 22:55

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