Does man command invoke less command to display manual contents?

Question

Whenever we use man command it opens the manual corresponding to the command(if exists). Operations on it are almost same as that of the less command(like search forward using / or backward using ? or browse forward using d etc). I am just curious whether man command internally invokes less command to display the manual contents?

score 5 · Accepted Answer · answered Jul 22 '13 at 06:18

5

By default, yes. This can be overridden via $PAGER and $MANPAGER in turn.

answered Jul 22 '13 at 06:18

Ignacio Vazquez-Abrams

4,462

score 3 · Answer 2 · answered Jul 28 '13 at 14:37

I would like to complement Ignacio's accepted answer.

Even the man utility has a manual that can be displayed by the man utility: man man.

The part answering your question:

Controlling formatted output

   -P pager, --pager=pager
          Specify which output pager to use.  By default, man uses less
          -s.  This option overrides the $MANPAGER environment variable,
          which in turn overrides the $PAGER environment variable.  It
          is not used in conjunction with -f or -k.

Does man command invoke less command to display manual contents?

2 Answers2