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In Unix-like operating systems, a man page (in full manual page) is a documentation for a terminal-based program/tool/utility (commonly known as a command). It contains the name of the command, syntax for using it, a description, options available, author, copyright, related commands etc.
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Read Also: ccat – Show ‘cat Command’ Output with Syntax Highlighting or Colorizing
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You can read the manual page for a Linux command as follows; this will display the man page for the df command:
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$ man df rn
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By default, the man program normally uses a terminal pager program such as more or less to format its output, and the default view is normally in white color for every kind of text (bold, underlined etc..).
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You can make some tweaks to your ~/.bashrc file to get nicely colored man pages by specifying a color scheme using various LESS_TERMCAP variables.
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$ vi ~/.bashrcrn
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Add following color scheme variables.
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export LESS_TERMCAP_mb=$'\e[1;32m'rnexport LESS_TERMCAP_md=$'\e[1;32m'rnexport LESS_TERMCAP_me=$'\e[0m'rnexport LESS_TERMCAP_se=$'\e[0m'rnexport LESS_TERMCAP_so=$'\e[01;33m'rnexport LESS_TERMCAP_ue=$'\e[0m'rnexport LESS_TERMCAP_us=$'\e[1;4;31m'rn
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Following are the color codes that we used in the above configuration.
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- 31 – red
- 32 – green
- 33 – yellow
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And here are the meanings of the escape codes used in the above configuration.
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- 0 – reset/normal
- 1 – bold
- 4 – underlined
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You can additionally reset your terminal by typing reset or even start up another shell. Now when you try to view a man page df command, it should look like this, nicer than the default view.
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Alternatively, you can use the MOST paging program, which works on Unix-like operating systems and supports multiple windows and can scroll left and right.
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$ sudo apt install mosttt#Debian/Ubuntu rn# yum install mosttt#RHEL/CentOSrn# dnf install mosttt#Fedora 22+rn
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Next, add the line below in your ~/.bashrc file, then source the file like before and possibly reset your terminal.
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export PAGER="most"rn
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Read Also: How to Customize Bash Colors and Content in Linux Terminal Prompt
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In this article, we showed you how to display beautifully colored man pages in Linux. To send us any queries or share any useful Linux shell tips/tricks, use the comment section below.
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