Reid Thompson wrote on 2012-01-04: > On Tue, 2012-01-03 at 15:30 -0600, Nellis, Kenneth wrote: >> Thought maybe someone would be interested in the following error. >> >> $ man gcc | head >> GCC(1) GNU >> GCC(1) >> >> >> >> NAME >> gcc - GNU project C and C++ compiler >> SYNOPSIS >> gcc [-c|-S|-E] [-std=standard] >> [-g] [-pg] [-Olevel] >> Error executing formatting or display command. >> System command (cd "/usr/share/man" && (echo ".pl 11i"; /usr/bin/gunzip >> -c '/usr/share/man/man1/gcc.1.gz') | /usr/bin/tbl | /usr/bin/nroff -c >> -mandoc 2>/dev/null | /usr/bin/less -isrR) exited with status 36096. >> No manual entry for gcc >> $ > > > probably not. Why are you wanting to head the output? Man already > displays using a pager.
Perhaps the OP was looking for something like apropos or whatis? Given that man already pipes its output through a pager, the OP could just use the MANPAGER environment variable to do what he wants: $ MANPAGER=head man gcc GCC(1) GNU GCC(1) NAME gcc - GNU project C and C++ compiler SYNOPSIS gcc [-c|-S|-E] [-std=standard] [-g] [-pg] [-Olevel] Hope this helps, -- Bryan Thrall Principal Software Engineer FlightSafety International bryan.thr...@flightsafety.com