The man.conf file contains two types of lines.

The first type of line is a ``section'' line, which contains a section name followed by a directory path. Lines in this format specify that manual pages for the section may be found in the directory.

Directories named with a trailing slash character (``/'') are expected to contain subdirectories (see the keyword ``_subdir'' below) instead of manual pages. These subdirectories are searched instead of the directory.

All directories (either explicitly specified or named with a trailing slash) may contain subdirectories. Man (1) automatically searches any subdirectory with the same name as the current machine type before the directory is searched. No specification of these subdirectories is necessary in the man.conf file.

Section names are unrestricted except for the reserved words specified below; in general, however, it is best to avoid anything beginning with an underscore (``_'') in order to avoid future incompatibilities.

The section named ``_default'' is the list of directories to be searched if no section is specified.

The second type of line is preceded with a ``keyword''. The possible keywords and their meanings are as follows:

_subdir The list (in search order) of subdirectories which will be searched in any directory named with a trailing slash (``/'') character. This list is also used when a path is specified by the MANPATH environment variable or the -M option. .

_version The version of the configuration file.

_whatdb The full pathname (not just a directory path) for a database to be used by the apropos (1) and whatis (1) commands.

Multiple specifications for all types of lines (except for ``_version'') are cumulative and the entries are used in the order listed in the file; multiple entries may be listed per line, as well.

Empty lines or lines whose first non-whitespace character is a hash mark (``#'') are ignored.

_version BSD.1
_subdir cat1 cat2 cat3
_default /usr/share/man/
sect3 /usr/share/man/cat3