CPPMAN(1)

📦 version 0.5.9, in debian bookworm, debian trixie, nixos 26.05, nixpkgs unstable, ubuntu jammy, ubuntu noble, ubuntu questing, ubuntu resolute, ubuntu stonking

💖 CPPMAN(1) — the cppman glow-up 💖

okay bestie, welcome to the cppman manual page 🎀 part of the User Manuals collection, and honestly? she's iconic.

✨ NAME ✨

cppman — your C++ manual page viewer and fetcher 🦋

✨ SYNOPSIS ✨

cppman [ OPTIONS...  ] PAGE...

✨ DESCRIPTION ✨

So here's the vibe: cppman generates C++ manual pages from cplusplus.com and gives you a man-like interface to view them. That's it, that's the whole thing. 💅

By default, cppman fetches man pages on-the-fly — like, live, in the moment, main character energy. But if you run the command cppman -c, all available manpages get cached, which makes offline browsing possible. 🫶 This is also required if you want to use the system man command. No cache, no man, no cap.

🌸 Browsing man pages 🌸

cppman uses Vi Improved as a pager. (yes, vim. we love her.)

Press q to leave the pager. Press K on an entry like vector::insert(3) and it links you straight to the manual page of vector::insert — like a hyperlink, fr fr. 🔥

🦋 man compatibility 🦋

cppman automatically adds $XDG_CACHE_HOME/cppman/man to ~/.manpath, so the cached man pages can also be viewed with the man command. 💖

Heads up though: to view uncached man pages, you still need to run cppman. The man command can't do it for you, sorry babe. 😭

✨ OPTIONS ✨

  • -s SOURCE, --source=SOURCE — Select source, either 'cppreference.com' or 'cplusplus.com'. Default is 'cppreference.com'. 👑
  • -c, --cache-all — cache all available man pages from cplusplus.com to enable offline browsing 💾✨
  • -C, --clear-cache — clear all cached files 🧹 (clean girl era)
  • -f KEYWORD, --find-page=KEYWORD — find man page 🔍
  • -o, --force-update — force cppman to update existing cache when --cache-all is used, or when browsing man pages that were already cached 🔄
  • -m MANDB, --use-mandb=MANDB — Accepts 'true' or 'false'. If true, cppman adds the manpage path to mandb so that you can view C++ manpages with the man command. The default value is 'false'. 🗂️
  • -p PAGER, --pager=PAGER — Select pager to use, accepts 'vim', 'nvim' or 'less'. The default value is 'vim'. If 'nvim' is selected but not available, 'vim' is used as a fallback and vice versa. If either is selected, but neither is available, 'less' is used as a fallback. 🎀
  • -r, --rebuild-index — rebuild index database from cplusplus.com 🛠️
  • -v, --version — show version information 🌈
  • -h, --help — show this help message and exit 🙈

✨ NOTE ✨

All contents should be cached by the user — cppman does not contain any pre‐cached contents. You gotta put in the work, bestie. 💪

Do NOT distribute the cached man pages without the permission of cplusplus.com. Like, seriously. That's a hard no. 🚫

✨ BUGS ✨

Although I spend a lot of time checking the format, there are still pages that won't display correctly. 😭 she's trying her best, okay?

Feel free to report bugs at:

Please include the page name in the bug report. 📝 (this part is literally so important, don't skip it)

✨ AUTHOR ✨

Wei‐Ning Huang (AZ) <aitjcize@gmail.com> 💜

and that's the whole page, periodt. 🎀

cute little sign-off time: this one's from the Linux manual, dated MAY 2010, and it's page CPPMAN(1). Yes bestie, 2010 — she's vintage, she's timeless, she ate. 💅✨🦋

📦 where this page comes from