4.3 Command Line Help
4.3.1 Man pages
The UNIX Programmer's Manual (also called man pages) describes what you need to know about the system's online commands, system calls, file formats, and system maintenance. The online man pages are part of the Solaris computing environment (and all other versions of UNIX) and are installed by default. Man pages are in the form of simple character-based screen displays and are not graphical.

To access the man pages, you will need to be at a command prompt. You may login at the command line or open a terminal window in CDE and start with a command prompt such as the Korn shell ($). Man pages are very helpful when you want to use a command or utility and you have forgotten the syntax or you need just some information about how to use it. The man pages will provide information on how to enter the command, a description of its purpose and what options or arguments are available. Some commands will not work with all three shells. The man pages will tell which commands will work with which shells. They refer to the Bourne shell as (sh), the Korn shell as (ksh) and the C shell as (csh).