mandoc
—
format manual pages
mandoc |
[ -ac ]
[-I
os =name ]
[-K
encoding ]
[-mdoc |
-man ]
[-O
options ]
[-T
output ]
[-W
level ]
[file ... ] |
The
mandoc
utility formats manual pages for
display.
By default,
mandoc
reads
mdoc(5) or
man(5)
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
more(1) to paginate the output, just like
man(1) would.
-
-
-c
- Copy the formatted manual pages to the standard output without using
more(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(5)
Os
and for the man(5)
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:
- If the first three bytes of the input file are the UTF-8 byte order
mark (BOM, 0xefbbbf), input is interpreted as
utf-8
.
- 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.
- If the first non-ASCII byte in the file introduces a valid UTF-8
sequence, input is interpreted as
utf-8
.
- Otherwise, input is interpreted as
iso-8859-1
.
-
-
-mdoc
|
-man
- With
-mdoc
, all input files are
interpreted as mdoc(5). With
-man
, all input files are interpreted
as man(5). By default, the input language is
automatically detected for each file: if the first macro is
Dd
or
Dt
, the
mdoc(5) parser is used; otherwise, the
man(5) 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(2) 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.
Use
-T
ascii
to force text output in 7-bit ASCII
character encoding documented in the
ascii(5)
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’.
The special characters documented in
mandoc_char(5)
are rendered best-effort in an ASCII equivalent.
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(5) and seven for
man(5). 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(5) input files in
mdoc(5) output style. Specifically, this
suppresses the two additional blank lines near the top and the bottom of
each page, and it implies
-O
indent
=5. One useful application is for
checking that -T
man
output formats in the same way as
the mdoc(5) source it was generated
from.
-
-
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.
Output produced by
-T
html
conforms to HTML5 using optional
self-closing tags. Default styles use only CSS1. Equations rendered from
eqn(5) blocks use MathML.
The
mandoc.css file 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
- 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.
-
-
style
=style.css
- The file style.css is used for an
external style-sheet. This must be a valid absolute or relative URI.
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
.
Use
-T
man
to translate
mdoc(5) input into
man(5) output format. This is useful for
distributing manual sources to legacy systems lacking
mdoc(5) formatters.
If the input format of a file is
man(5), the input
is copied to the output, expanding any
mandoc_roff(5)
so
requests. The parser is also run, and as
usual, the
-W
level controls which
DIAGNOSTICS are displayed
before copying the input to the output.
Use
-T
markdown
to translate
mdoc(5) input to the markdown format conforming
to
John
Gruber's 2004 specification. The output also almost conforms to the
CommonMark
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(5),
tbl(5),
and
eqn(5) input languages are not supported by
-T
markdown
output mode.
PDF-1.1 output may be generated by
-T
pdf
. See
PostScript Output for
-O
arguments and defaults.
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.
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.
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(5) prologue, on the
man(5) 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:
- For macro nodes, the macro name; for text and
tbl(5) nodes, the content. There is a special
format for eqn(5) nodes.
- Node type (text, elem, block, head, body, body-end, tail, tbl, eqn).
- 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.
-
-
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.
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 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
.
To page manuals to the terminal:
$ mandoc -l mandoc.1 man.1 apropos.1
makewhatis.8
To produce HTML manuals with
mandoc.css as
the style-sheet:
$ mandoc -T html -Ostyle=mandoc.css
mdoc.5 > mdoc.5.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.5
man.5 > manuals.ps
Convert a modern
mdoc(5) manual to the older
man(5) format, for use on systems lacking an
mdoc(5) parser:
$ mandoc -T man foo.mdoc >
foo.man
Messages displayed by
mandoc
follow this
format:
mandoc
:
file:line:column:
level:
message: macro
args (os)
Line and column numbers start at 1. Both are omitted for messages referring to
an input file as a whole. Macro names and 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:
-
-
unsupp
- An input file uses unsupported low-level
mandoc_roff(5) 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 except those about
non-existent or unreadable input files 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.
- 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.
- referenced manual not found
- (mdoc) An
Xr
macro references a manual
page that is not found in the base system. The path to look for base
system manuals is configurable at compile time and defaults to
/usr/share/man:
/usr/X11R6/man.
- legacy man(7) date format
- (mdoc) The
Dd
macro uses the legacy
man(5) date format
“yyyy-dd-mm”. Consider using the conventional
mdoc(5) 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- missing date, using today's date
- (mdoc, man) The document was parsed as
mdoc(5) and it has no
Dd
macro, or the
Dd
macro has no arguments or only empty
arguments; or the document was parsed as
man(5) 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.
- .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
apropos(1) or confuse
man(1) when updating the
whatis(1) database.
- 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.
- obsolete macro
- (mdoc) See the mdoc(5) 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(5) 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(5) 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.
- skipping empty request
- (roff, eqn) The macro name is missing from a macro definition request, or
an eqn(5) 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(5) 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.
- 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.
- unknown font, skipping request
- (man, tbl) A mandoc_roff(5)
ft
request or a
tbl(5) 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.
- 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 replaced with
sp
requests.
- 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, or the argument has too few characters. 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 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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(5) 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 mandoc_roff(5)
request, nor as a user-defined macro, nor, respectively, as an
mdoc(5) or
man(5) macro. It may be mistyped or
unsupported. The request or macro is discarded including its
arguments.
- 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(5)
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(5) block closing macro, a
man(5)
ME,
RE
or UE
macro, an
eqn(5) right delimiter or closing brace, or
the end of an equation, table, or
mandoc_roff(5) 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(5) 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(5) block, a
man(5) next-line scope or
MT
,
RS
or
UR
block, an equation, table, or
mandoc_roff(5) 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.
- 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.
- 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
-D
OSNAME="\"
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(5)
size
or
gsize
statement has a non-numeric or
negative argument or no argument at all. The invalid request or statement
is ignored.
- 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(5)
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(5)
LP
,
P
, or
PP
macro, an
eqn(5) EQ
or EN
macro, or a
mandoc_roff(5)
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.
- 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
mandoc_roff(5) implementations but not by
mandoc
was found in an input file. It
is replaced by a question mark.
- unsupported roff request
- (roff) An input file contains a
mandoc_roff(5) 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(5) or
man(5) macro or of an undefined macro. The
macro is ignored, and its arguments are handled as if they were a text
line.
eqn(5),
man(5),
mandoc_char(5),
mandoc_roff(5),
mdoc(5),
tbl(5)
The
mandoc
utility first appeared in
OpenBSD 4.8. The option
-I
appeared in
OpenBSD
5.2, and
-aCcfhKklMSsw
in
OpenBSD 5.7.
The
mandoc
utility was written by
Kristaps Dzonsons
<
kristaps@bsd.lv>
and is maintained by
Ingo Schwarze
<
schwarze@openbsd.org>.