HELP2MAN

Section: User Commands (1)
Updated: February 2018
Page Index

NAME

help2man - generate a simple manual page

SYNOPSIS

help2man [,OPTION/]... ,EXECUTABLE/

DESCRIPTION

`help2man' generates a man page out of `--help' and `--version' output.

-n, --name=,STRING/: description for the NAME paragraph
-s, --section=,SECTION/: section number for manual page (1, 6, 8)
-m, --manual=,TEXT/: name of manual (User Commands, ...)
-S, --source=,TEXT/: source of program (FSF, Debian, ...)
-L, --locale=,STRING/: select locale (default "C")
-i, --include=,FILE/: include material from `FILE'
-I, --opt-include=,FILE/: include material from `FILE' if it exists
-o, --output=,FILE/: send output to `FILE'
-p, --info-page=,TEXT/: name of Texinfo manual
-N, --no-info: suppress pointer to Texinfo manual
-l, --libtool: exclude the `lt-' from the program name
--help: print this help, then exit
--version: print version number, then exit

EXECUTABLE should accept `--help' and `--version' options and produce output on stdout although alternatives may be specified using:

-h, --help-option=,STRING/: help option string
-v, --version-option=,STRING/: version option string
--version-string=,STRING/: version string
--no-discard-stderr: include stderr when parsing option output

INCLUDE FILES

Additional material may be included in the generated output with the --include and --opt-include options. The format is simple:

[section]
text

/pattern/
text

Blocks of verbatim *roff text are inserted into the output either at the start of the given [section] (case insensitive), or after a paragraph matching /pattern/.

Patterns use the Perl regular expression syntax and may be followed by the i, s or m modifiers (see perlre(1)).

Lines before the first section or pattern which begin with `-' are processed as options. Anything else is silently ignored and may be used for comments, RCS keywords and the like.

The section output order (for those included) is:

    NAME
    SYNOPSIS
    DESCRIPTION
    OPTIONS
    ENVIRONMENT
    FILES
    EXAMPLES
    other
    AUTHOR
    REPORTING BUGS
    COPYRIGHT
    SEE ALSO

Any [NAME] or [SYNOPSIS] sections appearing in the include file will replace what would have automatically been produced (although you can still override the former with --name if required).

Other sections are prepended to the automatically produced output for the standard sections given above, or included at other (above) in the order they were encountered in the include file.

Placement of the text within the section may be explicitly requested by using the syntax [<section], [=section] or [>section] to place the additional text before, in place of, or after the default output respectively.

AVAILABILITY

The latest version of this distribution is available on-line from:

ftp://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/help2man/

AUTHOR

Written by Brendan O'Dea <bod@debian.org>

REPORTING BUGS

Report bugs to <bug-help2man@gnu.org>.

COPYRIGHT

Copyright © 1997, 1998, 1999, 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
This is free software; see the source for copying conditions. There is NO warranty; not even for MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.