MANDOC(1) - General Commands Manual #
MANDOC(1) - General Commands Manual
NAME #
mandoc - format manual pages
SYNOPSIS #
mandoc [-ac] [-I os=name] [-K encoding] [-mdoc | -man] [-O options] [-T output] [-W level] [file …]
DESCRIPTION #
The mandoc utility formats manual pages for display.
By default, mandoc reads mdoc(7) or man(7) text from stdin and produces -T locale output.
The options are as follows:
-a
If the standard output is a terminal device and -c is not specified, use less(1) to paginate the output, just like man(1) would.
-c
Copy the formatted manual pages to the standard output without using less(1) to paginate them. This is the default. It can be specified to override -a.
-I os=name
Override the default operating system name for the mdoc(7) Os and for the man(7) TH macro.
-K encoding
Specify the input encoding. The supported encoding arguments are us-ascii, iso-8859-1, and utf-8. If not specified, autodetection uses the first match in the following list:
- If the first three bytes of the input file are the UTF-8 byte order mark (BOM, 0xefbbbf), input is interpreted as utf-8.
- If the first or second line of the input file matches the emacs mode line format
.\" -*- […;] coding: encoding; -*-
then input is interpreted according to encoding.
- If the first non-ASCII byte in the file introduces a valid UTF-8 sequence, input is interpreted as utf-8.
- Otherwise, input is interpreted as iso-8859-1.
-mdoc | -man
With -mdoc, all input files are interpreted as mdoc(7). With -man, all input files are interpreted as man(7). By default, the input language is automatically detected for each file: if the first macro is Dd or Dt, the mdoc(7) parser is used; otherwise, the man(7) parser is used. With other arguments, -m is silently ignored.
-O options
Comma-separated output options. See the descriptions of the individual output formats for supported options.
-T output
Select the output format. Supported values for the output argument are ascii, html, the default of locale, man, markdown, pdf, ps, tree, and utf8.
The special -T lint mode only parses the input and produces no output. It implies -W all and redirects parser messages, which usually appear on standard error output, to standard output.
-W level
Specify the minimum message level to be reported on the standard error output and to affect the exit status. The level can be base, style, warning, error, or unsupp. The base level automatically derives the operating system from the contents of the Os macro, from the -Ios command line option, or from the uname(3) return value. The levels openbsd and netbsd are variants of base that bypass autodetection and request validation of base system conventions for a particular operating system. The level all is an alias for base. By default, mandoc is silent. See EXIT STATUS and DIAGNOSTICS for details.
The special option -W stop tells mandoc to exit after parsing a file that causes warnings or errors of at least the requested level. No formatted output will be produced from that file. If both a level and stop are requested, they can be joined with a comma, for example -W error,stop.
file
Read from the given input file. If multiple files are specified, they are processed in the given order. If unspecified, mandoc reads from standard input.
The options -fhklw are also supported and are documented in man(1). In -f and -k mode, mandoc also supports the options -CMmOSs described in the apropos(1) manual. The options -fkl are mutually exclusive and override each other.
ASCII Output #
Use -T ascii to force text output in 7-bit ASCII character encoding documented in the ascii(7) manual page, ignoring the locale(1) set in the environment.
Font styles are applied by using back-spaced encoding such that an underlined character ‘c’ is rendered as ‘_\[bs]c’, where ‘\[bs]’ is the back-space character number 8. Emboldened characters are rendered as ‘c\[bs]c’. This markup is typically converted to appropriate terminal sequences by the pager or ul(1). To remove the markup, pipe the output to col(1) -b instead.
The special characters documented in mandoc_char(7) are rendered best-effort in an ASCII equivalent. In particular, opening and closing ‘single quotes’ are represented as characters number 0x60 and 0x27, respectively, which agrees with all ASCII standards from 1965 to the latest revision (2012) and which matches the traditional way in which roff(7) formatters represent single quotes in ASCII output. This correct ASCII rendering may look strange with modern Unicode-compatible fonts because contrary to ASCII, Unicode uses the code point U+0060 for the grave accent only, never for an opening quote.
The following -O arguments are accepted:
indent=indent
The left margin for normal text is set to indent blank characters instead of the default of five. Increasing this is not recommended; it may result in degraded formatting, for example overfull lines or ugly line breaks. When output is to a pager on a terminal that is less than 66 columns wide, the default is reduced to three columns.
mdoc
Format man(7) input files in mdoc(7) output style. This prints the operating system name rather than the page title on the right side of the footer line. One useful application is for checking that -T man output formats in the same way as the mdoc(7) source it was generated from.
tag[=term]
If the formatted manual page is opened in a pager, go to the definition of the term rather than showing the manual page from the beginning. If no term is specified, reuse the first command line argument that is not a section number. If that argument is in apropos(1) key=val format, only the val is used rather than the argument as a whole. This is useful for commands like ‘
man -akO tag Ic=ulimit
’ to search for a keyword and jump right to its definition in the matching manual pages.
width=width
The output width is set to
*width*
instead of the default of 78.
When output is to a pager on a terminal that is less than 79 columns
wide, the default is reduced to one less than the terminal width.
In any case, lines that are output in literal mode are never wrapped
and may exceed the output width.
HTML Output #
Output produced by -T html conforms to HTML5 using optional self-closing tags. Equations rendered from eqn(7) blocks use MathML. Non-ASCII characters are rendered as hexadecimal Unicode character references.
The following -O arguments are accepted:
fragment
Omit the <!DOCTYPE> declaration and the <html>, <head>, and <body>
elements and only emit the subtree below the <body> element.
The
**style**
argument will be ignored.
This is useful when embedding manual content within existing documents.
includes=fmt
The string
*fmt*,
for example,
*../src/%I.html*,
is used as a template for linked header files (usually via the
**In**
macro).
Instances of
'%I'
are replaced with the include filename.
The default is not to present a
hyperlink.
man=fmt[;fmt]
The string
*fmt*,
for example,
*../html%S/%N.%S.html*,
is used as a template for linked manuals (usually via the
**Xr**
macro).
Instances of
'%N'
and
'%S'
are replaced with the linked manual's name and section, respectively.
If no section is included, section 1 is assumed.
The default is not to
present a hyperlink.
If two formats are given and a file
*%N.%S*
exists in the current directory, the first format is used;
otherwise, the second format is used.
style=style.css
The file
*style.css*
is used as an external stylesheet.
This must be a valid absolute or
relative URI.
Using the file
*mandoc.css*
that is distributed with
**mandoc**
is recommended.
It provides an appearance similar to terminal output with some additional
features specific to
**mandoc**
HTML output, in particular making anchor locations that support
deep linking stand out visually by putting a dotted line under them,
providing tooltips showing the semantic function of elements (macro
names), providing some simple aspects of responsive web design, and
providing simple support for users who prefer a dark color scheme.
Using a custom CSS file is possible, but writing it requires
proficiency in all of the languages HTML 5, CSS 4, and
[mdoc(7)](/man/man7/mdoc.7)
and familiarity with the
**mandoc**-specific
classes used in
*mandoc.css*.
Besides, while the file
*mandoc.css*
is always adapted to the HTML output generated by the
**mandoc**
version it is distributed with, maintaining a custom CSS file usually
requires adaptations each time
**mandoc**
is upgraded to a new version.
If a stylesheet is not specified with
**-O** **style**,
**-T** **html**
embeds a minimal stylesheet into the HTML output, mostly to select
adequate font-style and font-weight attributes for various macros.
The result is readable in any graphical or text-based web browser,
but does not aim for looking similar to terminal output.
Instead, formatting is mostly left to browser defaults
and to user settings in the browser configuration.
tag[=term]
Same syntax and semantics as for
*ASCII Output*.
This is implemented by passing a
**file://**
URI ending in a fragment identifier to the pager
rather than passing merely a file name.
When using this argument, use a pager supporting such URIs, for example
> MANPAGER='lynx -force_html' man -T html -O tag=MANPAGER man
> MANPAGER='w3m -T text/html' man -T html -O tag=toc mandoc
Consequently, for HTML output, this argument does not work with
more(1)
or
less(1).
For example,
'`MANPAGER=less man -T html -O tag=toc mandoc`'
does not work because
less(1)
does not support
**file://**
URIs.
toc
If an input file contains at least two non-standard sections,
print a table of contents near the beginning of the output.
Locale Output #
By default,
mandoc
automatically selects UTF-8 or ASCII output according to the current
locale(1).
If any of the environment variables
LC_ALL
,
LC_CTYPE
,
or
LANG
are set and the first one that is set
selects the UTF-8 character encoding, it produces
UTF-8 Output;
otherwise, it falls back to
ASCII Output.
This output mode can also be selected explicitly with
-T locale.
Man Output #
Use -T man to translate mdoc(7) input into man(7) output format. This is useful for distributing manual sources to legacy systems lacking mdoc(7) formatters. Embedded eqn(7) and tbl(7) code is not supported.
If the input format of a file is man(7), the input is copied to the output. The parser is also run, and as usual, the -W level controls which DIAGNOSTICS are displayed before copying the input to the output.
Markdown Output #
Use -T markdown to translate mdoc(7) input to the markdown format conforming to John Gruber’s 2004 specification. The output also almost conforms to the CommonMark specification.
The character set used for the markdown output is ASCII. Non-ASCII characters are encoded as HTML entities. Since that is not possible in literal font contexts, because these are rendered as code spans and code blocks in the markdown output, non-ASCII characters are transliterated to ASCII approximations in these contexts.
Markdown is a very weak markup language, so all semantic markup is lost, and even part of the presentational markup may be lost. Do not use this as an intermediate step in converting to HTML; instead, use -T html directly.
The man(7), tbl(7), and eqn(7) input languages are not supported by -T markdown output mode.
PDF Output #
PDF-1.1 output may be generated by -T pdf. See PostScript Output for -O arguments and defaults.
PostScript Output #
PostScript “Adobe-3.0” Level-2 pages may be generated by -T ps. Output pages default to letter sized and are rendered in the Times font family, 11-point. Margins are calculated as 1/9 the page length and width. Line-height is 1.4m.
Special characters are rendered as in ASCII Output.
The following -O arguments are accepted:
paper=name
The paper size
*name*
may be one of
*a3*,
*a4*,
*a5*,
*legal*,
or
*letter*.
You may also manually specify dimensions as
*NNxNN*,
width by height in millimetres.
If an unknown value is encountered,
*letter*
is used.
UTF-8 Output #
Use -T utf8 to force text output in UTF-8 multi-byte character encoding, ignoring the locale(1) settings in the environment. See ASCII Output regarding font styles and -O arguments.
On operating systems lacking locale or wide character support, and on those where the internal character representation is not UCS-4, mandoc always falls back to ASCII Output.
Syntax tree output #
Use -T tree to show a human readable representation of the syntax tree. It is useful for debugging the source code of manual pages. The exact format is subject to change, so don’t write parsers for it.
The first paragraph shows meta data found in the mdoc(7) prologue, on the man(7) TH line, or the fallbacks used.
In the tree dump, each output line shows one syntax tree node. Child nodes are indented with respect to their parent node. The columns are:
- For macro nodes, the macro name; for text and tbl(7) nodes, the content. There is a special format for eqn(7) nodes.
- Node type (text, elem, block, head, body, body-end, tail, tbl, eqn).
- Flags:
- An opening parenthesis if the node is an opening delimiter.
- An asterisk if the node starts a new input line.
- The input line number (starting at one).
- A colon.
- The input column number (starting at one).
- A closing parenthesis if the node is a closing delimiter.
- A full stop if the node ends a sentence.
- BROKEN if the node is a block broken by another block.
- NOSRC if the node is not in the input file, but automatically generated from macros.
- NOPRT if the node is not supposed to generate output for any output format.
The following -O argument is accepted:
noval
Skip validation and show the unvalidated syntax tree.
This can help to find out whether a given behaviour is caused by
the parser or by the validator.
Meta data is not available in this case.
ENVIRONMENT #
LC_CTYPE
The character encoding
locale(1).
When
*Locale Output*
is selected, it decides whether to use ASCII or UTF-8 output format.
It never affects the interpretation of input files.
MANPAGER
Any non-empty value of the environment variable
`MANPAGER`
is used instead of the standard pagination program,
less(1);
see
[man(1)](/man/man1/man.1)
for details.
Only used if
**-a**
or
**-l**
is specified.
PAGER
Specifies the pagination program to use when
`MANPAGER`
is not defined.
If neither PAGER nor MANPAGER is defined,
less(1)
is used.
Only used if
**-a**
or
**-l**
is specified.
EXIT STATUS #
The mandoc utility exits with one of the following values, controlled by the message level associated with the -W option:
0
No base system convention violations, style suggestions, warnings,
or errors occurred, or those that did were ignored because they
were lower than the requested
*level*.
1
At least one base system convention violation or style suggestion
occurred, but no warning or error, and
**-W** **base**
or
**-W** **style**
was specified.
2
At least one warning occurred, but no error, and
**-W** **warning**
or a lower
*level*
was requested.
3
At least one parsing error occurred,
but no unsupported feature was encountered, and
**-W** **error**
or a lower
*level*
was requested.
4
At least one unsupported feature was encountered, and
**-W** **unsupp**
or a lower
*level*
was requested.
5
Invalid command line arguments were specified.
No input files have been read.
6
An operating system error occurred, for example exhaustion
of memory, file descriptors, or process table entries.
Such errors may cause
**mandoc**
to exit at once, possibly in the middle of parsing or formatting a file.
Note that selecting -T lint output mode implies -W all.
EXAMPLES #
To page manuals to the terminal:
$ mandoc -a mandoc.1 man.1 apropos.1 makewhatis.8
To produce HTML manuals with /usr/share/misc/mandoc.css as the stylesheet:
$ mandoc -T html -O style=/usr/share/misc/mandoc.css mdoc.7 > mdoc.7.html
To check over a large set of manuals:
$ mandoc -T lint
find /usr/src -name \*\.[1-9]
To produce a series of PostScript manuals for A4 paper:
$ mandoc -T ps -O paper=a4 mdoc.7 man.7 > manuals.ps
Convert a modern mdoc(7) manual to the older man(7) format, for use on systems lacking an mdoc(7) parser:
$ mandoc -T man foo.mdoc > foo.man
DIAGNOSTICS #
Messages displayed by mandoc follow this format:
**mandoc**:
*file*:*line*:*column*: *level*: *message*: *macro argument ...*
(*os*)
The first three fields identify the file name, line number, and column number of the input file where the message was triggered. The line and column numbers start at 1. Both are omitted for messages referring to an input file as a whole. All level and message strings are explained below. The name of the macro triggering the message and its arguments are omitted where meaningless. The os operating system specifier is omitted for messages that are relevant for all operating systems. Fatal messages about invalid command line arguments or operating system errors, for example when memory is exhausted, may also omit the file and level fields.
Message levels have the following meanings:
syserr
An operating system error occurred.
There isn't necessarily anything wrong with the input files.
Output may all the same be missing or incomplete.
badarg
Invalid command line arguments were specified.
No input files have been read and no output is produced.
unsupp
An input file uses unsupported low-level
[roff(7)](/man/man7/roff.7)
features.
The output may be incomplete and/or misformatted,
so using GNU troff instead of
**mandoc**
to process the file may be preferable.
error
Indicates a risk of information loss or severe misformatting,
in most cases caused by serious syntax errors.
warning
Indicates a risk that the information shown or its formatting
may mismatch the author's intent in minor ways.
Additionally, syntax errors are classified at least as warnings,
even if they do not usually cause misformatting.
style
An input file uses dubious or discouraged style.
This is not a complaint about the syntax, and probably neither
formatting nor portability are in danger.
While great care is taken to avoid false positives on the higher
message levels, the
**style**
level tries to reduce the probability that issues go unnoticed,
so it may occasionally issue bogus suggestions.
Use your judgement to decide whether any particular
**style**
suggestion really justifies a change to the input file.
base
A convention used in the base system of a specific operating system
is not adhered to.
These are not markup mistakes, and neither the quality of formatting
nor portability are in danger.
Messages of the
**base**
level are printed with the more intuitive
**style**
*level*
tag.
Messages of the base, style, warning, error, and unsupp levels are hidden unless their level, or a lower level, is requested using a -W option or -T lint output mode.
As indicated below, all base and some style checks are only performed if a specific operating system name occurs in the arguments of the -W command line option, of the Os macro, of the -Ios command line option, or, if neither are present, in the return value of the uname(3) function.
Conventions for base system manuals #
Mdocdate found
(mdoc, NetBSD)
The
Dd
macro uses CVS
Mdocdate
keyword substitution, which is not supported by the
NetBSD
base system.
Consider using the conventional
“Month dd, yyyy”
format instead.
Mdocdate missing
(mdoc, OpenBSD)
The
Dd
macro does not use CVS
Mdocdate
keyword substitution, but using it is conventionally expected in the
OpenBSD
base system.
unknown architecture
(mdoc, OpenBSD, NetBSD)
The third argument of the
Dt
macro does not match any of the architectures this operating system
is running on.
operating system explicitly specified
(mdoc, OpenBSD, NetBSD)
The
Os
macro has an argument.
In the base system, it is conventionally left blank.
RCS id missing
(OpenBSD, NetBSD)
The manual page lacks the comment line with the RCS identifier
generated by CVS
OpenBSD
or
NetBSD
keyword substitution as conventionally used in these operating systems.
Style suggestions #
legacy man(7) date format
(mdoc)
The
Dd
macro uses the legacy
man(7)
date format
“yyyy-dd-mm”.
Consider using the conventional
mdoc(7)
date format
“Month dd, yyyy”
instead.
normalizing date format to: …
(mdoc, man)
The
Dd
or
TH
macro provides an abbreviated month name or a day number with a
leading zero.
In the formatted output, the month name is written out in full
and the leading zero is omitted.
lower case character in document title
(mdoc, man)
The title is still used as given in the
Dt
or
TH
macro.
duplicate RCS id
A single manual page contains two copies of the RCS identifier for
the same operating system.
Consider deleting the later instance and moving the first one up
to the top of the page.
possible typo in section name
(mdoc)
Fuzzy string matching revealed that the argument of an
Sh
macro is similar, but not identical to a standard section name.
unterminated quoted argument
(roff)
Macro arguments can be enclosed in double quote characters
such that space characters and macro names contained in the quoted
argument need not be escaped.
The closing quote of the last argument of a macro can be omitted.
However, omitting it is not recommended because it makes the code
harder to read.
useless macro
(mdoc)
A
Bt,
Tn,
or
Ud
macro was found.
Simply delete it: it serves no useful purpose.
consider using OS macro
(mdoc)
A string was found in plain text or in a
Bx
macro that could be represented using
Ox,
Nx,
Fx,
or
Dx.
errnos out of order
(mdoc, NetBSD)
The
Er
items in a
Bl
list are not in alphabetical order.
duplicate errno
(mdoc, NetBSD)
A
Bl
list contains two consecutive
It
entries describing the same
Er
number.
referenced manual not found
(mdoc)
An
Xr
macro references a manual page that was not found.
When running with
-W base,
the search is restricted to the base system, by default to
/usr/share/man:/usr/X11R6/man.
This path can be configured at compile time using the
MANPATH_BASE
preprocessor macro.
When running with
-W style,
the search is done along the full search path as described in the
man(1)
manual page, respecting the
-m
and
-M
command line options, the
MANPATH
environment variable, the
man.conf(5)
file and falling back to the default of
/usr/share/man:/usr/X11R6/man:/usr/local/man,
also configurable at compile time using the
MANPATH_DEFAULT
preprocessor macro.
trailing delimiter
(mdoc)
The last argument of an
Ex, Fo, Nd, Nm, Os, Sh, Ss, St,
or
Sx
macro ends with a trailing delimiter.
This is usually bad style and often indicates typos.
Most likely, the delimiter can be removed.
no blank before trailing delimiter
(mdoc)
The last argument of a macro that supports trailing delimiter
arguments is longer than one byte and ends with a trailing delimiter.
Consider inserting a blank such that the delimiter becomes a separate
argument, thus moving it out of the scope of the macro.
fill mode already enabled, skipping
(man)
A
fi
request occurs even though the document is still in fill mode,
or already switched back to fill mode.
It has no effect.
fill mode already disabled, skipping
(man)
An
nf
request occurs even though the document already switched to no-fill mode
and did not switch back to fill mode yet.
It has no effect.
input text line longer than 80 bytes
Consider breaking the input text line
at one of the blank characters before column 80.
verbatim “–”, maybe consider using (em
(mdoc)
Even though the ASCII output device renders an em-dash as
“–”,
that is not a good way to write it in an input file
because it renders poorly on all other output devices.
function name without markup
(mdoc)
A word followed by an empty pair of parentheses occurs on a text line.
Consider using an
Fn
or
Xr
macro.
whitespace at end of input line
(mdoc, man, roff)
Whitespace at the end of input lines is almost never semantically
significant – but in the odd case where it might be, it is
extremely confusing when reviewing and maintaining documents.
bad comment style
(roff)
Comment lines start with a dot, a backslash, and a double-quote character.
The
mandoc
utility treats the line as a comment line even without the backslash,
but leaving out the backslash might not be portable.
Warnings related to the document prologue #
missing manual title, using UNTITLED
(mdoc)
A
Dt
macro has no arguments, or there is no
Dt
macro before the first non-prologue macro.
missing manual title, using “”
(man)
There is no
TH
macro, or it has no arguments.
missing manual section, using “”
(mdoc, man)
A
Dt
or
TH
macro lacks the mandatory section argument.
unknown manual section
(mdoc)
The section number in a
Dt
line is invalid, but still used.
filename/section mismatch
(mdoc, man)
The name of the input file being processed is known and its file
name extension starts with a non-zero digit, but the
Dt
or
TH
macro contains a
section
argument that starts with a different non-zero digit.
The
section
argument is used as provided anyway.
Consider checking whether the file name or the argument need a correction.
missing date, using “”
(mdoc, man)
The document was parsed as
mdoc(7)
and it has no
Dd
macro, or the
Dd
macro has no arguments or only empty arguments;
or the document was parsed as
man(7)
and it has no
TH
macro, or the
TH
macro has less than three arguments or its third argument is empty.
cannot parse date, using it verbatim
(mdoc, man)
The date given in a
Dd
or
TH
macro does not follow the conventional format.
date in the future, using it anyway
(mdoc, man)
The date given in a
Dd
or
TH
macro is more than a day ahead of the current system
time(3).
missing Os macro, using “”
(mdoc)
The default or current system is not shown in this case.
late prologue macro
(mdoc)
A
Dd
or
Os
macro occurs after some non-prologue macro, but still takes effect.
prologue macros out of order
(mdoc)
The prologue macros are not given in the conventional order
Dd,
Dt,
Os.
All three macros are used even when given in another order.
Warnings regarding document structure #
.so is fragile, better use ln(1)
(roff)
Including files only works when the parser program runs with the correct
current working directory.
no document body
(mdoc, man)
The document body contains neither text nor macros.
An empty document is shown, consisting only of a header and a footer line.
content before first section header
(mdoc, man)
Some macros or text precede the first
Sh
or
SH
section header.
The offending macros and text are parsed and added to the top level
of the syntax tree, outside any section block.
first section is not NAME
(mdoc)
The argument of the first
Sh
macro is not
‘NAME’.
This may confuse
makewhatis(8)
and
apropos(1).
NAME section without Nm before Nd
(mdoc)
The NAME section does not contain any
Nm
child macro before the first
Nd
macro.
NAME section without description
(mdoc)
The NAME section lacks the mandatory
Nd
child macro.
description not at the end of NAME
(mdoc)
The NAME section does contain an
Nd
child macro, but other content follows it.
bad NAME section content
(mdoc)
The NAME section contains plain text or macros other than
Nm
and
Nd.
missing comma before name
(mdoc)
The NAME section contains an
Nm
macro that is neither the first one nor preceded by a comma.
missing description line, using “”
(mdoc)
The
Nd
macro lacks the required argument.
The title line of the manual will end after the dash.
description line outside NAME section
(mdoc)
An
Nd
macro appears outside the NAME section.
The arguments are printed anyway and the following text is used for
apropos(1),
but none of that behaviour is portable.
sections out of conventional order
(mdoc)
A standard section occurs after another section it usually precedes.
All section titles are used as given,
and the order of sections is not changed.
duplicate section title
(mdoc)
The same standard section title occurs more than once.
unexpected section
(mdoc)
A standard section header occurs in a section of the manual
where it normally isn’t useful.
cross reference to self
(mdoc, man)
An
Xr
or
MR
macro refers to a name and section matching the section of the present
manual page and a name mentioned in an
Nm
macro in the NAME or SYNOPSIS section, or in an
Fn
or
Fo
macro in the SYNOPSIS.
Consider using
Nm
or
Fn
instead of
Xr.
unusual Xr order
(mdoc)
In the SEE ALSO section, an
Xr
macro with a lower section number follows one with a higher number,
or two
Xr
macros referring to the same section are out of alphabetical order.
unusual Xr punctuation
(mdoc)
In the SEE ALSO section, punctuation between two
Xr
macros differs from a single comma, or there is trailing punctuation
after the last
Xr
macro.
AUTHORS section without An macro
(mdoc)
An AUTHORS sections contains no
An
macros, or only empty ones.
Probably, there are author names lacking markup.
Warnings related to macros and nesting #
obsolete macro
(mdoc)
See the
mdoc(7)
manual for replacements.
macro neither callable nor escaped
(mdoc)
The name of a macro that is not callable appears on a macro line.
It is printed verbatim.
If the intention is to call it, move it to its own input line;
otherwise, escape it by prepending
‘&’.
skipping paragraph macro
In
mdoc(7)
documents, this happens
- at the beginning and end of sections and subsections
- right before non-compact lists and displays
- at the end of items in non-column, non-compact lists
- and for multiple consecutive paragraph macros.
In man(7) documents, it happens
- for empty P, PP, and LP macros
- for IP macros having neither head nor body arguments
- for br or sp right after SH or SS
moving paragraph macro out of list
(mdoc)
A list item in a
Bl
list contains a trailing paragraph macro.
The paragraph macro is moved after the end of the list.
skipping no-space macro
(mdoc)
An input line begins with an
Ns
macro, or the next argument after an
Ns
macro is an isolated closing delimiter.
The macro is ignored.
blocks badly nested
(mdoc)
If two blocks intersect, one should completely contain the other.
Otherwise, rendered output is likely to look strange in any output
format, and rendering in SGML-based output formats is likely to be
outright wrong because such languages do not support badly nested
blocks at all.
Typical examples of badly nested blocks are
“Ao Bo Ac Bc”
and
“Ao Bq Ac”.
In these examples,
Ac
breaks
Bo
and
Bq,
respectively.
nested displays are not portable
(mdoc)
A
Bd,
D1,
or
Dl
display occurs nested inside another
Bd
display.
This works with
mandoc,
but fails with most other implementations.
moving content out of list
(mdoc)
A
Bl
list block contains text or macros before the first
It
macro.
The offending children are moved before the beginning of the list.
first macro on line
Inside a
Bl -column
list, a
Ta
macro occurs as the first macro on a line, which is not portable.
line scope broken
(man)
While parsing the next-line scope of the previous macro,
another macro is found that prematurely terminates the previous one.
The previous, interrupted macro is deleted from the parse tree.
Warnings related to missing arguments #
skipping empty request
(roff, eqn)
The macro name is missing from a macro definition request,
or an
eqn(7)
control statement or operation keyword lacks its required argument.
conditional request controls empty scope
(roff)
A conditional request is only useful if any of the following
follows it on the same logical input line:
- The ‘{’ keyword to open a multi-line scope.
- A request or macro or some text, resulting in a single-line scope.
- The immediate end of the logical line without any intervening whitespace, resulting in next-line scope.
Here, a conditional request is followed by trailing whitespace only, and there is no other content on its logical input line. Note that it doesn’t matter whether the logical input line is split across multiple physical input lines using ‘' line continuation characters. This is one of the rare cases where trailing whitespace is syntactically significant. The conditional request controls a scope containing whitespace only, so it is unlikely to have a significant effect, except that it may control a following el clause.
skipping empty macro
(mdoc)
The indicated macro has no arguments and hence no effect.
empty block
(mdoc, man)
A
Bd,
Bk,
Bl,
D1,
Dl,
or
RS
block contains nothing in its body and will produce no output.
empty argument, using 0n
(mdoc)
The required width is missing after
Bd
or
Bl
-offset
or
-width.
missing display type, using -ragged
(mdoc)
The
Bd
macro is invoked without the required display type.
list type is not the first argument
(mdoc)
In a
Bl
macro, at least one other argument precedes the type argument.
The
mandoc
utility copes with any argument order, but some other
mdoc(7)
implementations do not.
missing -width in -tag list, using 8n
(mdoc)
Every
Bl
macro having the
-tag
argument requires
-width,
too.
missing utility name, using “”
(mdoc)
The
Ex -std
macro is called without an argument before
Nm
has first been called with an argument.
missing function name, using “”
(mdoc)
The
Fo
macro is called without an argument.
No function name is printed.
empty head in list item
(mdoc)
In a
Bl
-diag,
-hang,
-inset,
-ohang,
or
-tag
list, an
It
macro lacks the required argument.
The item head is left empty.
empty list item
(mdoc)
In a
Bl
-bullet,
-dash,
-enum,
or
-hyphen
list, an
It
block is empty.
An empty list item is shown.
missing argument, using next line
(mdoc)
An
It
macro in a
Bd -column
list has no arguments.
While
mandoc
uses the text or macros of the following line, if any, for the cell,
other formatters may misformat the list.
missing font type, using \fR
(mdoc)
A
Bf
macro has no argument.
It switches to the default font.
unknown font type, using \fR
(mdoc)
The
Bf
argument is invalid.
The default font is used instead.
nothing follows prefix
(mdoc)
A
Pf
macro has no argument, or only one argument and no macro follows
on the same input line.
This defeats its purpose; in particular, spacing is not suppressed
before the text or macros following on the next input line.
empty reference block
(mdoc)
An
Rs
macro is immediately followed by an
Re
macro on the next input line.
Such an empty block does not produce any output.
missing section argument
(mdoc, man)
An
Xr
or
MR
macro lacks its second, section number argument.
The first argument, i.e. the name, is printed, but without a section number.
In the case of
Xr,
the parentheses are also omitted.
missing -std argument, adding it
(mdoc)
An
Ex
or
Rv
macro lacks the required
-std
argument.
The
mandoc
utility assumes
-std
even when it is not specified, but other implementations may not.
missing option string, using “”
(man)
The
OP
macro is invoked without any argument.
An empty pair of square brackets is shown.
missing resource identifier, using “”
(man)
The
MT
or
UR
macro is invoked without any argument.
An empty pair of angle brackets is shown.
missing eqn box, using “”
(eqn)
A diacritic mark or a binary operator is found,
but there is nothing to the left of it.
An empty box is inserted.
Warnings related to bad macro arguments #
duplicate argument
(mdoc)
A
Bd
or
Bl
macro has more than one
-compact,
more than one
-offset,
or more than one
-width
argument.
All but the last instances of these arguments are ignored.
skipping duplicate argument
(mdoc)
An
An
macro has more than one
-split
or
-nosplit
argument.
All but the first of these arguments are ignored.
skipping duplicate display type
(mdoc)
A
Bd
macro has more than one type argument; the first one is used.
skipping duplicate list type
(mdoc)
A
Bl
macro has more than one type argument; the first one is used.
skipping -width argument
(mdoc)
A
Bl
-column,
-diag,
-ohang,
-inset,
or
-item
list has a
-width
argument.
That has no effect.
wrong number of cells
In a line of a
Bl -column
list, the number of tabs or
Ta
macros is less than the number expected from the list header line
or exceeds the expected number by more than one.
Missing cells remain empty, and all cells exceeding the number of
columns are joined into one single cell.
unknown AT&T UNIX version
(mdoc)
An
At
macro has an invalid argument.
It is used verbatim, with
“AT&T UNIX "
prefixed to it.
comma in function argument
(mdoc)
An argument of an
Fa
or
Fn
macro contains a comma; it should probably be split into two arguments.
parenthesis in function name
(mdoc)
The first argument of an
Fc
or
Fn
macro contains an opening or closing parenthesis; that’s probably wrong,
parentheses are added automatically.
unknown library name
(mdoc, not on OpenBSD)
An
Lb
macro has an unknown name argument and will be rendered as
“library “name””.
invalid content in Rs block
(mdoc)
An
Rs
block contains plain text or non-% macros.
The bogus content is left in the syntax tree.
Formatting may be poor.
invalid Boolean argument
(mdoc)
An
Sm
macro has an argument other than
on
or
off.
The invalid argument is moved out of the macro, which leaves the macro
empty, causing it to toggle the spacing mode.
argument contains two font escapes
(roff)
The second argument of a
char
request contains more than one font escape sequence.
A wrong font may remain active after using the character.
unknown font, skipping request
(man, tbl)
A
roff(7)
ft
request or a
tbl(7)
f
layout modifier has an unknown
font
argument.
ignoring distance argument
(roff)
In addition to the margin character, an
mc
request has a second argument supposed to represent a distance, but the
mandoc
implementation of
mc
always ignores the second argument.
odd number of characters in request
(roff)
A
tr
request contains an odd number of characters.
The last character is mapped to the blank character.
Warnings related to plain text #
blank line in fill mode, using .sp
(mdoc)
The meaning of blank input lines is only well-defined in non-fill mode:
In fill mode, line breaks of text input lines are not supposed to be
significant.
However, for compatibility with groff, blank lines in fill mode
are formatted like
sp
requests.
To request a paragraph break, use
Pp
instead of a blank line.
tab in filled text
(mdoc, man)
The meaning of tab characters is only well-defined in non-fill mode:
In fill mode, whitespace is not supposed to be significant
on text input lines.
As an implementation dependent choice, tab characters on text lines
are passed through to the formatters in any case.
Given that the text before the tab character will be filled,
it is hard to predict which tab stop position the tab will advance to.
new sentence, new line
(mdoc)
A new sentence starts in the middle of a text line.
Start it on a new input line to help formatters produce correct spacing.
invalid escape sequence argument
(roff)
The argument of an escape sequence is of an invalid form.
Invalid escape sequences are ignored.
undefined escape, printing literally
(roff)
In an escape sequence, the first character
right after the leading backslash is invalid.
That character is printed literally,
which is equivalent to ignoring the backslash.
undefined string, using “”
(roff)
If a string is used without being defined before,
its value is implicitly set to the empty string.
However, defining strings explicitly before use
keeps the code more readable.
Warnings related to tables #
tbl line starts with span
(tbl)
The first cell in a table layout line is a horizontal span
(’s’).
Data provided for this cell is ignored, and nothing is printed in the cell.
tbl column starts with span
(tbl)
The first line of a table layout specification
requests a vertical span
(’^’).
Data provided for this cell is ignored, and nothing is printed in the cell.
skipping vertical bar in tbl layout
(tbl)
A table layout specification contains more than two consecutive vertical bars.
A double bar is printed, all additional bars are discarded.
Errors related to tables #
non-alphabetic character in tbl options
(tbl)
The table options line contains a character other than a letter,
blank, or comma where the beginning of an option name is expected.
The character is ignored.
skipping unknown tbl option
(tbl)
The table options line contains a string of letters that does not
match any known option name.
The word is ignored.
missing tbl option argument
(tbl)
A table option that requires an argument is not followed by an
opening parenthesis, or the opening parenthesis is immediately
followed by a closing parenthesis.
The option is ignored.
wrong tbl option argument size
(tbl)
A table option argument contains an invalid number of characters.
Both the option and the argument are ignored.
empty tbl layout
(tbl)
A table layout specification is completely empty,
specifying zero lines and zero columns.
As a fallback, a single left-justified column is used.
invalid character in tbl layout
(tbl)
A table layout specification contains a character that can neither
be interpreted as a layout key character nor as a layout modifier,
or a modifier precedes the first key.
The invalid character is discarded.
unmatched parenthesis in tbl layout
(tbl)
A table layout specification contains an opening parenthesis,
but no matching closing parenthesis.
The rest of the input line, starting from the parenthesis, has no effect.
ignoring excessive spacing in tbl layout
(tbl)
A spacing modifier in a table layout is unreasonably large.
The default spacing of 3n is used instead.
tbl without any data cells
(tbl)
A table does not contain any data cells.
It will probably produce no output.
ignoring data in spanned tbl cell
(tbl)
A table cell is marked as a horizontal span
(’s’)
or vertical span
(’^’)
in the table layout, but it contains data.
The data is ignored.
ignoring extra tbl data cells
(tbl)
A data line contains more cells than the corresponding layout line.
The data in the extra cells is ignored.
data block open at end of tbl
(tbl)
A data block is opened with
T{,
but never closed with a matching
T}.
The remaining data lines of the table are all put into one cell,
and any remaining cells stay empty.
Errors related to roff, mdoc, and man code #
duplicate prologue macro
(mdoc)
One of the prologue macros occurs more than once.
The last instance overrides all previous ones.
skipping late title macro
(mdoc)
The
Dt
macro appears after the first non-prologue macro.
Traditional formatters cannot handle this because
they write the page header before parsing the document body.
Even though this technical restriction does not apply to
mandoc,
traditional semantics is preserved.
The late macro is discarded including its arguments.
input stack limit exceeded, infinite loop?
(roff)
Explicit recursion limits are implemented for the following features,
in order to prevent infinite loops:
- expansion of nested escape sequences including expansion of strings and number registers,
- expansion of nested user-defined macros,
- and so file inclusion.
When a limit is hit, the output is incorrect, typically losing some content, but the parser can continue.
skipping bad character
(mdoc, man, roff)
The input file contains a byte that is not a printable
ascii(7)
character.
The message mentions the character number.
The offending byte is replaced with a question mark
(’?’).
Consider editing the input file to replace the byte with an ASCII
transliteration of the intended character.
skipping unknown macro
(mdoc, man, roff)
The first identifier on a request or macro line is neither recognized as a
roff(7)
request, nor as a user-defined macro, nor, respectively, as an
mdoc(7)
or
man(7)
macro.
It may be mistyped or unsupported.
The request or macro is discarded including its arguments.
skipping request outside macro
(roff)
A
shift
or
return
request occurs outside any macro definition and has no effect.
skipping insecure request
(roff)
An input file attempted to run a shell command
or to read or write an external file.
Such attempts are denied for security reasons.
skipping item outside list
(mdoc, eqn)
An
It
macro occurs outside any
Bl
list, or an
eqn(7)
above
delimiter occurs outside any pile.
It is discarded including its arguments.
skipping column outside column list
(mdoc)
A
Ta
macro occurs outside any
Bl -column
block.
It is discarded including its arguments.
skipping end of block that is not open
(mdoc, man, eqn, tbl, roff)
Various syntax elements can only be used to explicitly close blocks
that have previously been opened.
An
mdoc(7)
block closing macro, a
man(7)
ME, RE
or
UE
macro, an
eqn(7)
right delimiter or closing brace, or the end of an equation, table, or
roff(7)
conditional request is encountered but no matching block is open.
The offending request or macro is discarded.
fewer RS blocks open, skipping
(man)
The
RE
macro is invoked with an argument, but less than the specified number of
RS
blocks is open.
The
RE
macro is discarded.
inserting missing end of block
(mdoc, tbl)
Various
mdoc(7)
macros as well as tables require explicit closing by dedicated macros.
A block that doesn’t support bad nesting
ends before all of its children are properly closed.
The open child nodes are closed implicitly.
appending missing end of block
(mdoc, man, eqn, tbl, roff)
At the end of the document, an explicit
mdoc(7)
block, a
man(7)
next-line scope or
MT, RS
or
UR
block, an equation, table, or
roff(7)
conditional or ignore block is still open.
The open block is closed implicitly.
escaped character not allowed in a name
(roff)
Macro, string and register identifiers consist of printable,
non-whitespace ASCII characters.
Escape sequences and characters and strings expressed in terms of them
cannot form part of a name.
The first argument of an
am,
as,
de,
ds,
nr,
or
rr
request, or any argument of an
rm
request, or the name of a request or user defined macro being called,
is terminated by an escape sequence.
In the cases of
as,
ds,
and
nr,
the request has no effect at all.
In the cases of
am,
de,
rr,
and
rm,
what was parsed up to this point is used as the arguments to the request,
and the rest of the input line is discarded including the escape sequence.
When parsing for a request or a user-defined macro name to be called,
only the escape sequence is discarded.
The characters preceding it are used as the request or macro name,
the characters following it are used as the arguments to the request or macro.
using macro argument outside macro
(roff)
The escape sequence $ occurs outside any macro definition
and expands to the empty string.
argument number is not numeric
(roff)
The argument of the escape sequence $ is not a digit;
the escape sequence expands to the empty string.
negative argument, using 0
(roff)
A
shift
request has a negative argument
or an argument that is negative due to integer overflow.
Macro argument numbering remains unchanged.
NOT IMPLEMENTED: Bd -file
(mdoc)
For security reasons, the
Bd
macro does not support the
-file
argument.
By requesting the inclusion of a sensitive file, a malicious document
might otherwise trick a privileged user into inadvertently displaying
the file on the screen, revealing the file content to bystanders.
The argument is ignored including the file name following it.
skipping display without arguments
(mdoc)
A
Bd
block macro does not have any arguments.
The block is discarded, and the block content is displayed in
whatever mode was active before the block.
missing list type, using -item
(mdoc)
A
Bl
macro fails to specify the list type.
argument is not numeric, using 1
(roff)
The argument of a
ce
request is not a number.
argument is not a character
(roff)
The first argument of a
char
request is neither a single ASCII character
nor a single character escape sequence.
The request is ignored including all its arguments.
skipping unusable escape sequence
(roff)
The first argument of an
mc
request is neither a single ASCII character
nor a single character escape sequence.
All arguments are ignored and printing of a margin character is disabled.
missing manual name, using “”
(mdoc, man)
The first call to
Nm,
or any call in the NAME section, lacks the required argument, or
MR
is called without any argument.
uname(3) system call failed, using UNKNOWN
(mdoc)
The
Os
macro is called without arguments, and the
uname(3)
system call failed.
As a workaround,
mandoc
can be compiled with
-D****OSNAME=”"string"".
unknown standard specifier
(mdoc)
An
St
macro has an unknown argument and is discarded.
skipping request without numeric argument
(roff, eqn)
An
it
request or an
eqn(7)
size
or
gsize
statement has a non-numeric or negative argument or no argument at all.
The invalid request or statement is ignored.
excessive shift
(roff)
The argument of a
shift
request is larger than the number of arguments of the macro that is
currently being executed.
All macro arguments are deleted and \n(.$ is set to zero.
NOT IMPLEMENTED: .so with absolute path or “..”
(roff)
For security reasons,
mandoc
allows
so
file inclusion requests only with relative paths
and only without ascending to any parent directory.
By requesting the inclusion of a sensitive file, a malicious document
might otherwise trick a privileged user into inadvertently displaying
the file on the screen, revealing the file content to bystanders.
mandoc
only shows the path as it appears behind
so.
.so request failed
(roff)
Servicing a
so
request requires reading an external file, but the file could not be
opened.
mandoc
only shows the path as it appears behind
so.
skipping all arguments
(mdoc, man, eqn, roff)
An
mdoc(7)
Bt,
Ed,
Ef,
Ek,
El,
Lp,
Pp,
Re,
Rs,
or
Ud
macro, an
It
macro in a list that don’t support item heads, a
man(7)
LP,
P,
or
PP
macro, an
eqn(7)
EQ
or
EN
macro, or a
roff(7)
br,
fi,
or
nf
request or
‘..’
block closing request is invoked with at least one argument.
All arguments are ignored.
skipping excess arguments
(mdoc, man, roff)
A macro or request is invoked with too many arguments:
- Fo, MT, PD, RS, UR, ft, or sp with more than one argument
- An with another argument after -split or -nosplit
- RE with more than one argument or with a non-integer argument
- OP or a request of the de family with more than two arguments
- Dt or MR with more than three arguments
- TH with more than five arguments
- Bd, Bk, or Bl with invalid arguments
The excess arguments are ignored.
Errors related to escape sequences #
incomplete escape sequence
(roff)
The end of the input line is encountered
while parsing the argument of an escape sequence.
In this case,
*
and
\n
expand to an empty string,
\B
to the digit
‘0’,
and
\w
to the length of the incomplete argument.
All other incomplete escape sequences are ignored.
invalid special character
(roff)
A special character escape sequence is invalid,
for example a Unicode sequence pointing to a surrogate
or beyond the Unicode range, a [char…] escape sequence
representing a control character or pointing beyond the
unsigned char
range, or an invalid variable-length form
of a single-byte character escape sequence, for example writing
“[e]”
or
“[~]”
instead of
“\e”
or
“~”,
respectively.
The escape sequence is ignored.
unknown special character
(roff)
The name given in a special character escape sequence is not known to
mandoc.
The escape sequence is ignored.
invalid escape argument delimiter
(roff)
An escape sequence that expects a numerical argument
attempts to employ one of the characters
" %&()*+-./0123456789:<=>"
as an argument delimiter.
The escape sequence is ignored including the invalid opening delimiter
and the rest of the argument may appear as output text.
While various characters can be used as argument delimiters,
using the apostrophe-quote character
(’’’)
is recommended for readability and robustness.
Unsupported features #
input too large
(mdoc, man)
Currently,
mandoc
cannot handle input files larger than its arbitrary size limit
of 2^31 bytes (2 Gigabytes).
Since useful manuals are always small, this is not a problem in practice.
Parsing is aborted as soon as the condition is detected.
unsupported control character
(roff)
An ASCII control character supported by other
roff(7)
implementations but not by
mandoc
was found in an input file.
It is replaced by a question mark.
unsupported escape sequence
(roff)
An input file contains an escape sequence supported by GNU troff
or Heirloom troff but not by
mandoc,
and it is likely that this will cause information loss
or considerable misformatting.
unsupported roff request
(roff)
An input file contains a
roff(7)
request supported by GNU troff or Heirloom troff but not by
mandoc,
and it is likely that this will cause information loss
or considerable misformatting.
eqn delim option in tbl
(eqn, tbl)
The options line of a table defines equation delimiters.
Any equation source code contained in the table will be printed unformatted.
unsupported table layout modifier
(tbl)
A table layout specification contains an
‘m’
modifier.
The modifier is discarded.
ignoring macro in table
(tbl, mdoc, man)
A table contains an invocation of an
mdoc(7)
or
man(7)
macro or of an undefined macro.
The macro is ignored, and its arguments are handled
as if they were a text line.
skipping tbl in -Tman mode
(mdoc, tbl)
An input file contains the
TS
macro.
This message is only generated in
-T man
output mode, where
tbl(7)
input is not supported.
skipping eqn in -Tman mode
(mdoc, eqn)
An input file contains the
EQ
macro.
This message is only generated in
-T man
output mode, where
eqn(7)
input is not supported.
Bad command line arguments #
bad command line argument
The argument following one of the
-IKMmOTW
command line options is invalid, or a
file
given as a command line argument cannot be opened.
duplicate command line argument
The
-I
command line option was specified twice.
option has a superfluous value
An argument to the
-O
option has a value but does not accept one.
missing option value
An argument to the
-O
option has no argument but requires one.
bad option value
An argument to the
-O
indent
or
width
option has an invalid value.
duplicate option value
The same
-O
option is specified more than once.
no such tag
The
-O tag
option was specified but the tag was not found in any of the displayed
manual pages.
-Tmarkdown unsupported for man(7) input
(man)
The
-T markdown
option was specified but an input file uses the
man(7)
language.
No output is produced for that input file.
SEE ALSO #
apropos(1), man(1), eqn(7), man(7), mandoc_char(7), mdoc(7), roff(7), tbl(7)
HISTORY #
The mandoc utility first appeared in OpenBSD 4.8. The option -I appeared in OpenBSD 5.2, and -aCcfhKklMSsw in OpenBSD 5.7.
AUTHORS #
The mandoc utility was written by Kristaps Dzonsons <kristaps@bsd.lv> and is maintained by Ingo Schwarze <schwarze@openbsd.org>.
OpenBSD 7.5 - November 13, 2023