A man page for fork, for example, is in the System Calls section that has number 2:
man 2 fork
How do you see what else is section 2 without resorting to Google?
- Without google, but via web, go to man7.org/linux/man-pages/dir_section_2.html (or main page here: kernel.org/doc/man-pages )belacqua– belacqua2014-05-13 23:41:07 +00:00Commented May 13, 2014 at 23:41
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5 Answers
To list all installed man pages from a specific section you can use apropos:
apropos -s 2 . # use an regex for apropos . means anything apropos -s 2 -w '*' # use unix globbing for apropos 
- 1"apropos: -s: unknown option"Michael Mrozek– Michael Mrozek2012-07-30 20:36:39 +00:00Commented Jul 30, 2012 at 20:36
- @MichaelMrozek what system are you using? It works for me, e.g: output of apropos -s 2 -w '*'Ulrich Dangel– Ulrich Dangel2012-07-30 20:42:59 +00:00Commented Jul 30, 2012 at 20:42
- 1Thanks. The -s option is not present in Mac OS X apropos, which is presumably from BSD.xyz– xyz2012-07-30 21:09:08 +00:00Commented Jul 30, 2012 at 21:09
- @f100 Ah ok, maybe try
man -a -s 2 '*'Ulrich Dangel– Ulrich Dangel2012-07-30 21:16:20 +00:00Commented Jul 30, 2012 at 21:16 - That seems more like it, but instead of listing them, it's actually invoking the viewer for each one in turn. I've hacked up a function to do listing which I posted in another comment. It likely has issues but it's enough for me :)xyz– xyz2012-07-30 21:50:59 +00:00Commented Jul 30, 2012 at 21:50
Manpages are usually placed in /usr/share/man, but check $MANPATH, and are organized into sections like so:
Section 1: /usr/share/man/man1/ Section 2: /usr/share/man/man2/ ... So to list all installed section 2 manpages, do:
ls /usr/share/man/man2/ Or the more complete one:
find $(echo $MANPATH | tr ':' ' ') -path '*/man2/*' The latter one will have problems if you have directories in $MANPATH with space in their names.
On most distributions you can also check available man pages with a package tool, e.g. on Debian derived distributions you can use apt-file like so:
apt-file search /man2/ 
- 1Thanks - This was the start I needed. I made a shell function that is run e.g.
lman 2and lists the unadorned name for each page on a new line and pages them. The function's body is:find $(man --path | tr ':' ' ') -path "*/man$1/*"| xargs basename | sort | sed -E "s/\.$1(.gz)?\$//" | lessxyz– xyz2012-07-30 21:41:11 +00:00Commented Jul 30, 2012 at 21:41
This command lists the sorted names of all the entries in the given section:
man -aWS 1 \* | xargs basename | sed 's/\.[^.]*$//' | sort -u If you want to see the pathnames, use:
man -aWS 1 \* | sed 's/\.[^.]*$//' | sort This tells man to search a section for all commands using the wildcard pattern * (backslash-quoted so the shell doesn't interpret it). -a finds all matches, -W prints the pathnames instead of displaying the pages, and -S 1 specifies section one. Change the 1 to whatever section you want to search.
The sed command strips the filename extensions; remove it if you want to see the complete filenames. sort sorts the results (-u removes duplicates).
For convenient reuse, this defines a Bash shell function:
function mansect { man -aWS ${1?man section not provided} \* | xargs basename | sed 's/\.[^.]*$//' | sort -u; } For example, you can invoke it as mansect 3 to see the entries in section three.
[Tested on macOS.]
- Nice - Thanks. I get some duplicates (e.g. paths in /Applications/Xcode.app and "Accelerate" in section 7), but nothing putting a
uniqin the pipeline doesn't fix.xyz– xyz2016-09-05 13:34:06 +00:00Commented Sep 5, 2016 at 13:34 - @xyz: I updated the sort command to
sort -uto remove duplicates.Chris Page– Chris Page2016-09-06 20:40:14 +00:00Commented Sep 6, 2016 at 20:40 - 2I get
No manual entry for *Jonathan Ginsburg– Jonathan Ginsburg2020-10-22 19:04:31 +00:00Commented Oct 22, 2020 at 19:04
On Mac OS X, the only thing I can get to work is man -k . | grep -F '(3)', which lists everything in section 3.
I know this is a very old question, however the answers given here all didn't work for me. Therefore I came up with the following one-liner that works on Ubuntu 18.04 and macOS Mojave, 10.14.6:
find $(man --path | tr ':' ' ') -type f -path '*man2*' \ -exec basename {} \; | sed 's/\..*//' | sort Quick run down:
- form Thors answer:
$(man --path | tr ':' ' ')to get the current paths of the man pages find <man paths> -type f -path '*man2*' -exec basename {} \;gets the file names of all regular files in the man pathssedgets rid of the file extensionsortalphabetically.
- This listing is a bit too naive, it is great if it works for what you need to do — but keep in mind that the man search algorithm is pretty intricate. See
man manfor more details. (In particular, it can search for things 'near the roots', and all sectionN pages aren't under manN subfolders.)folkol– folkol2022-06-04 18:25:07 +00:00Commented Jun 4, 2022 at 18:25