Re: _man only uses $manpath

Re: _man only uses $manpath

[Sven Wischnowsky]

Oliver Kiddle wrote:

> Sven Wischnowsky wrote:
> > Andrej Borsenkow wrote:
> > > On Thu, 16 Sep 1999, Adam Spiers wrote:
> > > > Sounds like we need some way of intelligently figuring out a solution
> > > > for both scenarios.  Does `man -w' return an error of some sort on
> > > > your system which we could test for?
> > > Well, exit code != 0. I have no idea, how reliable it is (different
> > > versions etc)
> > 
> > Same here for Digital Unix. Maybe we should test $OSTYPE?
> 
> The only man I can find which does support -w or --path is the GNU one.
> The exit code of != 0 seems fine on the systems I've looked at provided
> stderr is redirected.
> 
> What are you trying to achieve with man -w - find a default manpath to
> use if $manpath is unset? As far as I can tell man -w only gives you the
> location of a specific man page which isn't entirely useful for finding
> a default manpath as the default can (and often will) contain more than
> one directory. The only way I know of finding the default manpath is by
> running the man binary through strings. Maybe we could use a for loop to
> guess possible man directories and check them.

Yes, a la `_x_color'.

Bye
 Sven


--
Sven Wischnowsky                         wischnow@informatik.hu-berlin.de

Re: _man only uses $manpath

[Adam Spiers]

Sven Wischnowsky (wischnow@informatik.hu-berlin.de) wrote:
> Oliver Kiddle wrote:
> > What are you trying to achieve with man -w - find a default manpath to
> > use if $manpath is unset? As far as I can tell man -w only gives you the
> > location of a specific man page which isn't entirely useful for finding
> > a default manpath as the default can (and often will) contain more than
> > one directory.

No, the GNU man displays all the man paths it will use if invoked as
`man -w':

       -w or --path
              Don't  actually display the man pages, but do print
              the location(s) of the files that would be  format-
              ted  or displayed. If no argument is given: display
              (on  stdout)  the  list  of  directories  that   is
              searched by man for man pages. If manpath is a link
              to  man,  then  "manpath"  is  equivalent  to  "man
              --path".

       -W     Like -w, but print file names one per line, without
              additional information.  This is  useful  in  shell
              commands like man -aW man | xargs ls -l

> > The only way I know of finding the default manpath is by
> > running the man binary through strings.

In the GNU case, you can just grep /etc/man.config for `^MANPATH '.

> > Maybe we could use a for loop to
> > guess possible man directories and check them.
> 
> Yes, a la `_x_color'.

I'd rather keep guessing as a last resort.  Maybe try man -w and check
the exit code, then

  if [[ -r /etc/man.config ]]; then 
    ...

?

Re: _man only uses $manpath

[Oliver Kiddle]

Adam Spiers wrote:
> 
> No, the GNU man displays all the man paths it will use if invoked as
> `man -w':

It seems that GNU man itself varies. The GNU man on the debian linux
system I have access to at work prints:
What manual page do you want?
in response to -w with no argument and has no -W option. Note that it
does return an exit code of 1 though so we can still use man -w if we
check the exit code. 

> In the GNU case, you can just grep /etc/man.config for `^MANPATH '.

That must be specific to your linux distribution as opposed to GNU man.

> I'd rather keep guessing as a last resort.  Maybe try man -w and check
> the exit code, then
>   if [[ -r /etc/man.config ]]; then

That's probably the best approach as long as we don't find a system that
breaks it.

Oliver Kiddle

Re: _man only uses $manpath

[Clint Adams]

> Yes, a la `_x_color'.

Just to complicate things further, man_db (as used by Debian)
uses an /etc/manpath.config that looks like this:

MANDATORY_MANPATH                       /usr/man
MANDATORY_MANPATH                       /usr/share/man
MANDATORY_MANPATH                       /usr/X11R6/man
MANDATORY_MANPATH                       /usr/local/man
#---------------------------------------------------------
# set up PATH to MANPATH mapping
# ie. what man tree holds man pages for what binary directory.
#
#               *PATH*        ->        *MANPATH*
#
MANPATH_MAP     /bin                    /usr/share/man
MANPATH_MAP     /usr/bin                /usr/share/man
MANPATH_MAP     /sbin                   /usr/share/man
MANPATH_MAP     /usr/sbin               /usr/share/man
MANPATH_MAP     /usr/local/bin          /usr/local/man
MANPATH_MAP     /usr/local/sbin         /usr/local/man
MANPATH_MAP     /usr/X11R6/bin          /usr/X11R6/man
MANPATH_MAP     /usr/bin/X11            /usr/X11R6/man
MANPATH_MAP     /usr/games              /usr/share/man
MANPATH_MAP     /opt/bin                /opt/man
MANPATH_MAP     /opt/sbin               /opt/man
#---------------------------------------------------------
#               *MANPATH*     ->        *CATPATH*
#
MANDB_MAP       /usr/man                /var/cache/man/fsstnd
MANDB_MAP       /usr/share/man          /var/cache/man
MANDB_MAP       /usr/local/man          /var/cache/man/local
MANDB_MAP       /usr/X11R6/man          /var/cache/man/X11R6
MANDB_MAP       /opt/man                /var/cache/man/opt

Re: _man only uses $manpath

[Clint Adams]

> MANDATORY_MANPATH                       /usr/man
> MANDATORY_MANPATH                       /usr/share/man
> MANDATORY_MANPATH                       /usr/X11R6/man
> MANDATORY_MANPATH                       /usr/local/man

And if you want that as a colon-delimited list, you can run
the manpath binary.

PATCH: Re: _man only uses $manpath

[Oliver Kiddle]

Clint Adams wrote:

> And if you want that as a colon-delimited list, you can run
> the manpath binary.

As far as I can tell, running manpath will always work where man -w will
and in other cases such as debian where man -w doesn't so we can use
that. I've attached a basic patch which tries running manpath and
failing that, uses filename expansion to generate a reasonable guessed
manpath. No doubt we'll shortly find that everyone can think of many
more directories which can be in the default manpath. I couldn't think
of a much better way to check the directories other than determining
that they are existing directories. A for loop can be used if someone
can think of a suitable check.

I'm not convinced that it is worth it to parse files in /etc for any
system where a the manpath command exists so I haven't bothered with it.

As an aside, can the filename generation below be put all in one word:
it seems that I can't nest brackets with | and can't do things like (|/)
without getting a zsh: bad pattern error.

Oliver Kiddle

*** _man.old	Fri Sep 17 14:39:09 1999
--- _man	Fri Sep 17 15:08:42 1999
***************
*** 14,19 ****
--- 14,22 ----
    approx="(#a${_comp_correct})"
  fi
  
+ [ "$manpath" ] || manpath=$(manpath 2>/dev/null) || \
+   manpath=( /usr/man(-/N)
/(opt|usr)/(dt|share|X11R6|local)/(cat|)man(-/N) )
+ 
  if [[ $words[2] = (<->*|ln) ]]; then
    rep=(
   
$manpath/(man|cat)${words[2]}/${~approx}$PREFIX${~star}$SUFFIX.<->*(N:t:r)
)

Re: PATCH: Re: _man only uses $manpath

[Peter Stephenson]

Oliver Kiddle wrote:
> As an aside, can the filename generation below be put all in one word:
> it seems that I can't nest brackets with | and can't do things like (|/)
> without getting a zsh: bad pattern error.

> +   manpath=( /usr/man(-/N)
/(opt|usr)/(dt|share|X11R6|local)/(cat|)man(-/N) )

If you read the manual, you'll see that / in () isn't supposed to work,
with one exception which you can use here --- it's not exactly what you
want, because it will match those names to any depth:

/(opt|usr)/(dt|share|X11R6|local/)#(cat|)man(-/N)

There are actually two problems here.  The first is that the test for the
existence of a file segment in a closure is bungled.  The patch below
is supposed to fix this.  I can't see how the code as it is can be right.
(This wouldn't show up in this case, actually; only in the rare case where
you have a fixed string in (.../)#, as I did when testing the following,
which is presumably why no-one has ever noticed.)

The second is more subtle.  (.../)# behaves like **/, not ***/, in that it
won't follow links, so if /usr/local is a link (as it is here, which is why
I'm writing this at all) it won't be included.  That's deliberate, since
**/, and not ***/, is the abbreviation for (*/)#.  But it's rather
inconvenient.  I can't think of a really clean fix.

--- Src/glob.c.sfp	Tue Sep 14 13:43:43 1999
+++ Src/glob.c	Fri Sep 17 16:33:47 1999
@@ -476,7 +476,7 @@
 
 	    if (!errflag && !(q->closure && !strcmp(str, "."))) {
 		addpath(str);
-		if (!closure || statfullpath("", NULL, 1))
+		if (!closure || !statfullpath("", NULL, 1))
 		    scanner((q->closure) ? q : q->next);
 		pathbuf[pathpos = oppos] = '\0';
 	    }

-- 
Peter Stephenson <pws@ibmth.df.unipi.it>       Tel: +39 050 844536
WWW:  http://www.ifh.de/~pws/
Dipartimento di Fisica, Via Buonarroti 2, 56127 Pisa, Italy