Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!sobeco!lamy
From: lamy@sobeco.com (Jean-Francois Lamy)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mips
Subject: MANPATH misbehaviour
Message-ID: <1990Sep22.032115.23562@sobeco.com>
Date: 22 Sep 90 03:21:15 GMT
Sender: lamy@sobeco.com (j.lamy)
Organization: Sobeco Group - Montreal, Canada
Lines: 20

If I export MANPATH=/local/man:/usr/man and put a man page in
/local/man/man1/rcs.1, /usr/bin/man rcs will show me the /usr/man man page for
rcs first, and the /local/man man page second, something I'd consider strongly
undesirable.  The BSD man will show me the /usr/man version only.

Thinking this might be caused by a silly algorithm whereby "cat" pages
get searched thouroughly before "man" pages, I tried creating a
/local/man/cat1/rcs.1, to no avail.

While I'm whining about man I would dearly love to hear what the rationale
behind the /usr/man disorganisation is, especially why "cat" format man
pages are now in the place where one would expect "man" format man pages to be.

Oh well.  Nothing a freely-redistributable source version of man can't fix.
Except I shouldn't have to go through this just because I want to run versions
of programs that are more recent than what Mips ships and have man pages that
match them... (no, overwriting the man pages in /usr is not an acceptable
solution)

-- Lamy, grumpy.