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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.

4
  • 2
    You need a better title.
    – SLaks
    Dec 24, 2009 at 21:20
  • 1
    @Slaks: You mean the answer isn't "Buy him a blackberry"?
    – mbarnett
    Dec 24, 2009 at 21:22
  • @Matt: Exactly.
    – SLaks
    Dec 24, 2009 at 21:24
  • Ops! Did not read it in this way :)))
    – tig
    Dec 24, 2009 at 21:29

4 Answers 4

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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:

  1. using MANPAGER or PAGER variables (MANPAGER is better as PAGER affects not only man command)

    export MANPAGER='ul | cat -s'
    
  2. in man.conf

    PAGER       ul | cat -s
    
  3. using -P parameter

    cat -P 'ul | cat -s' …
    

    or

    alias man='man -P "ul | cat -s"'
    
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  • 1
    +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 <command>. Ubuntu 12.04.2.
    – G-Wiz
    Jul 17, 2013 at 3:52
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.

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  • Why the downvote? This may not be the optimal solution, but it's not incorrect. Try it: $ PAGER=cat man foobar.
    – bcat
    Dec 24, 2009 at 21:44
  • Isn't using cat as a pager essentially the same thing as not using a pager at all?
    – bcat
    Dec 24, 2009 at 21:46
  • The question is about not using a pager and this without loosing highlighting. Dec 24, 2009 at 21:47
  • When I try this approach, I lose highlighting (on Mac OS X and Ubuntu). Dec 24, 2009 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… Feb 19, 2014 at 9:28
1

Alternatively, there's always the -P switch:

man -P cat foo
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  • I already sad that with -P cat I use highlighting
    – tig
    Dec 24, 2009 at 23:43
  • I checked my theory with <code>man -P cat man |tee foo.txt ; less -R foo.txt</code>. The formatting is still there; it just doesn't show up in the command window. Jan 4, 2010 at 22:55
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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.

1
  • man on mac has no -l and -T params
    – tig
    Dec 24, 2009 at 23:46

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