nroff(1)

💅 NAME

nroff — format documents with groff for terminal (“TTY”) devices.

This is nroff(1) from the General Commands Manual, bestie — and she is so good at making groff docs play nice with your terminal. 💖

✨ SYNOPSIS

Here’s the exact shape of the command, no cap:

nroff [-abcCEhikpRStUVzZ] [-d ctext] [-d string=text] [-D fallback-input-encoding] [-I inclusion-directory] [-K input-encoding] [-m macro-package] [-M macro-directory] [-n page-number] [-o page-list] [-P postprocessor-argument] [-r cnumeric-expression] [-r register=numeric-expression] [-T output-device] [-w warning-category] [-W warning-category] [file ...]

nroff --help

nroff -v [other-nroff-option ...]

nroff --version [other-nroff-option ...]

🦋 DESCRIPTION

Okay so nroff formats documents written in the groff(7) language for typewriter-like devices such as terminal emulators. GNU nroff emulates the AT&T nroff command using groff(1). nroff generates output via grotty(1), groff’s terminal output driver, which needs to know the character encoding scheme used by the device. Consequently, acceptable arguments to the -T option are ascii, latin1, and utf8; any others are ignored. If neither the GROFF_TYPESETTER environment variable nor the -T command-line option (which overrides the environment variable) specifies a (valid) device, nroff consults the locale to select an appropriate output device. It first tries the locale(1) program, then checks several locale-related environment variables; see section “Environment” below. If all of the foregoing fail, nroff assumes -T ascii.

Now the option lore, because we are not skipping a single flag:

• -a, -b, -c, -C, -d, -E, -i, -I, -m, -M, -n, -o, -r, -U, -w, -W, and -z — these have the effects described in troff(1). -c and -h imply -P -c and -P -h, respectively; -c is also meaningful to troff itself. Further, GNU nroff ignores the AT&T nroff options -e, -q, and -s.
• -D, -k, -K, -p, -P, -R, -t, -S, and -Z — groff(1) documents these, so that’s your lore source.
• -V — causes nroff to display the constructed groff command on the standard output stream, but does not execute it.
• -v and --version — show version information about nroff and the programs it runs. --help displays a usage message; all exit afterward. 💅

💀 EXIT STATUS

• 2 — if there was a problem parsing its arguments.
• 0 — if any of the options -V, -v, --version, or --help were specified.
• the status of groff — otherwise.

🌈 ENVIRONMENT

Normally, the path separator in environment variables ending with PATH is the colon; this may vary depending on the operating system. For example, Windows uses a semicolon instead.

• GROFF_BIN_PATH — locate groff commands in these directories, followed by those in PATH. If not set, the installation directory of GNU roff executables, /usr/bin, is searched before PATH.
• GROFF_TYPESETTER — specifies the default output device for groff.
• LC_ALL, LC_CTYPE, LANG, LESSCHARSET — are pattern-matched in this order for contents matching standard character encodings supported by groff in the event no -T option is given and GROFF_TYPESETTER is unset, or the values specified are invalid.

🎀 FILES

• /usr/share/groff/1.24.2/tmac/tty-char.tmac — defines fallback definitions of roff special characters. These definitions more poorly optically approximate typeset output than those of tty.tmac in favor of communicating semantic information. nroff loads it automatically.

🫶 NOTES

Pager programs like more(1) and less(1) may require command-line options to correctly handle some output sequences; see grotty(1).

👑 SEE ALSO

groff(1), troff(1), grotty(1), locale(1), roff(7)

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💖 cute sign-off: this iconic page is from groff 1.24.2, dated 2026-10-01, and it’s the nroff(1) manual. Periodt. 🎀✨