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Mohammad Reza Rezwani
Asked: 2014-04-26 11:51:36 +0800 CST

What is the meaning of the words with underline in a man page?

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For most commands that I have seen, there are some underlined words in their man page. What is the meaning of this underline? Is that a link? If yes, how we can go there?

manpage

3 Answers

  1. Best Answer

    Most underlined words in man pages are for emphasis. Its is not a hyperlink .

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  2. also from man man page

       italic text        replace with appropriate argument.
   [-abc]             any or all arguments within [ ] are optional.
   -a|-b              options delimited by | cannot be used together.

   argument ...       argument is repeatable.
   [expression] ...   entire expression within [ ] is repeatable.

   Exact rendering may vary depending on the output device.  For instance,
   man will usually not be able to render italics when running in a termi‐
   nal, and will typically use underlined or coloured text instead.
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  3. Italics (emphasis; as clearly answered above, they are usually displayed underlined, unfortunately) are used in several sections of a manual page for different purposes.

    In the synopsis, boldface is used for as-is text and italics are used to
indicate  replaceable  arguments.

For  manual  pages  that describe a command (typically in Sections 1 and 8),
the arguments are always specified using italics, even in the SYNOPSIS section.

For manual pages that describe functions (typically in Sections 2  and  3),
the arguments  are  always  specified  using  italics, even in the SYNOPSIS section,
where the rest of the function is specified in bold:

       int myfunction(int argc, char **argv);

Variable names should, like argument names, be specified in italics.

    General formatting conventions:

    If  the  command is short, then it can be included inline in the text, in italic
format, for example, man 7 man-pages.  In this case, it may be worth using  non‐
breaking  spaces  ("\ ")  at  suitable  places  in the command.  Command options
should be written in italics (e.g., -l).

Expressions, if not written on a separate indented line, should be specified  in
italics.  Again, the use of nonbreaking spaces may be appropriate if the expres‐
sion is inlined with normal text.

    Consult man-pages(7) for more details.

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