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:
|
1. |
If the first three bytes of the input file are the UTF-8 byte order mark (BOM, 0xefbbbf), input is interpreted as utf-8. | ||
|
2. |
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.
|
3. |
If the first non-ASCII byte in the file introduces a valid UTF-8 sequence, input is interpreted as utf-8. | ||
|
4. |
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 for mdoc(7) and seven for man(7). 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, and it implies -O indent=5. 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. Default styles use only CSS1.
Equations rendered from eqn(7) blocks use MathML.
The file /usr/share/misc/mandoc.css documents style-sheet classes available for customising output. If a style-sheet is not specified with -O style, -T html defaults to simple output (via an embedded style-sheet) readable in any graphical or text-based web browser.
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 for an external style-sheet. This must be a valid absolute or relative URI.
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:
http://daringfireball.net/projects/markdown/syntax.text.
The output also almost conforms to the CommonMark:
http://commonmark.org/ 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:
|
1. |
For macro nodes, the macro name; for text and tbl(7) nodes, the content. There is a special format for eqn(7) nodes. | ||
|
2. |
Node type (text, elem, block, head, body, body-end, tail, tbl, eqn). | ||
|
3. |
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) 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 -l mandoc.1 man.1 apropos.1 makewhatis.8
To produce HTML manuals with /usr/share/misc/mandoc.css as the style-sheet:
$ 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 arguments (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) 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. Please use your good 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) An Xr 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, MT, RS, or UR 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) An Xr macro lacks its second, section number
argument. The first argument, i.e. the name, is printed, but
without subsequent parentheses.
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.
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
(roff) An escape sequence has an invalid opening argument
delimiter, lacks the closing argument delimiter, the
argument is of an invalid form, or it is a character escape
sequence with an invalid name. If the argument is
incomplete, \* and \n expand to an empty
string, \B to the digit ’0’, and
\w to the length of the incomplete argument. All
other 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.
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.
missing
manual name, using ""
(mdoc) The first call to Nm, or any call in the NAME
section, lacks the required 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
-DOSNAME="\"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 with more than three arguments | ||
|
- |
TH with more than five arguments | ||
|
- |
Bd, Bk, or Bl with invalid arguments |
The excess arguments are ignored.
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 [AT] bsd.lv> and is maintained by Ingo Schwarze <schwarze [AT] openbsd.org>.