MANDOC(1) User Commands MANDOC(1)

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(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.

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 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 mandoc.css as the style-sheet:

$ mandoc -T html -O style=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(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 mandoc_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(2)
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. 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(2).

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 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.

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 mandoc_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 replaced with 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 mandoc_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
mandoc_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 mandoc_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(2) system call failed, using UNKNOWN
(mdoc) The Os macro is called without arguments, and the uname(2)
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
mandoc_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 mandoc_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 mandoc_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

eqn(7), man(7), mandoc_char(7), mandoc_roff(7), mdoc(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@bsd.lv>
and is maintained by Ingo Schwarze <schwarze@openbsd.org>.

illumos March 30, 2022 illumos