www.LinuxHowtos.org howtos, tips&tricks and tutorials for linux

from small one page howto to huge articles all in one place

Other .linuxhowtos.org sites:toolsntoys.linuxhowtos.org
gentoo.linuxhowtos.org

poll results

Last additions:

using iotop to find disk usage hogs

words:

887

views:

195651

userrating:

average rating: 1.7 (102 votes) (1=very good 6=terrible)

May 25th. 2007:

Words

486

Views

252057

why adblockers are bad

Workaround and fixes for the current Core Dump Handling vulnerability affected kernels

words:

161

views:

140921

userrating:

average rating: 1.4 (42 votes) (1=very good 6=terrible)

April, 26th. 2006:

Words

Views

100785

New subdomain: toolsntoys.linuxhowtos.org

You are here: manpages

GROFF_FILENAMES

Section: Environments, Tables, and Troff Macros (7)
Updated: 4 November 2014
Index Return to Main Contents

NAME

groff_filenames --- filename extensions for roff and groff

DESCRIPTION

Since the evolution of roff in the 1970s, a whole bunch of filename extensions for roff files were used. The roff extensions refer to preprocessors or macro packages. These extensions are fixed in all Unix-like operating systems. Later on, groff added some more extensions. We will now write a man-page about these filename extensions.

COMPRESSION OF ROFF FILES

Each roff file can be optionally compressed. That means that the total filename ends with a compressor name. So the whole filename has the structure <name>CB].<extension>[CB].<compression>]. Mostly known are the compressor extensions .Z, .gz, and .bzip2. Relatively new is .xz. From now on, we will ignore the compressions and only comment the structure <name>.<extension>.

MAN-PAGES

The Unix manual pages are shortly named man-pages. The man-page style is the best known part of the roff language. The extensions for man should be better documented. So this is documented here. Files written in the man language use the following extension: *.<section>[<group>].

Man-page Sections

The traditional man-page <section> is a digit from 1 to 8.

<name>.1: <name>.2 <name>.3 <name>.4 <name>.5 <name>.6 <name>.7 <name>.8 Classic man-page sections. Linux added the section number 9 for kernel man-pages.
<name>.9: Linux kernel man-pages In older commercial Unix systems, the 3 characters l, n, and o were also used as section names. This is today deprecated, but there are still documents in this format.
<name>.l: <name>.n <name>.o Deprecated old man-page sections.

Man-page Group Extensions

The <group> extension in .<section>[<group>] is optional, but it can be any string of word characters. Usually programmers use a group name that is already used, e.g. x for X Window System documents or tk to refer to the tk programming language. Examples:

groff.1: is the man-page for groff in section 1 without a group
xargs.1posix.gz: is the man-page for the program xargs in section 1 and group posix; moreover it is compressed with gz (gzip).
config.5ssl: OpenSSL CONF library configuration files from section 5 with group ssl.
dpkg-reconfigure.8cdebconf: man-page for the program dpkg-reconfigure in section 8 and group cdebconf.

Source of Man-pages

There are 2 roff languages for writing man-pages: man and mdoc. The names of these 2 styles are taken as extensions for the source code files of man-pages in the groff package.

<name>.man: traditional Unix-like man-page format within groff source files.
<name>.n: A temporary man-page file produced from a name.man man-page by a run of make within the groff source package.
<name>.mdoc: Man-page format in BSD.
<name>.1b: Man-page format in heirloom roff .
<name>.mandoc: Files using this extension recognize both man-page formats in groff and other processors.

TRADITIONAL TROFF EXTENSIONS

Files Using Macro Packages

The classical roff languages were interpreted by the traditional troff and nroff programs. There were several roff languages, each represented by a macro-package. Each of these provided a suitable file name extension:

<name>.me: roff file using the me macro package.
<name>.mm: roff file using the mm macro package
<name>.ms: roff file using the ms macro package All of these classical roff languages and their extensions are still very active in groff.

Source Code for Macro Packages (TMAC Files)

In traditional roff the source code for the macro packages was stored in TMAC files. Their file names have the form:

tmac.<package>,: <package> is the name of the macro package without the leading m character, which is reintegrated by the option -m. For example, tmac.an is the source for the man macro package. In the groff source, more suitable file names were integrated, see later on.

Preprocessors

Moreover, the following preprocessors were used as filename extension:

<name>.chem: for the integration of chemical formulas
<name>.eqn: for the mathematical use of equations
<name>.pic: graphical tool
<name>.tbl: for tables with tbl
<name>.ref: for files using the prefer preprocessor

Classical Roff Files

<name>.t: <name>.tr for files using the roff language of any kind

NEW GROFF EXTENSIONS

GNU roff groff is the actual roff standard, both for classical roff and new extensions. So even the used new extensions in the source code should be regarded as actual standard. The following extensions are used instead of classical .t or .tr:

<name>.groff: <name>.roff general ending for files using the groff language

Source Code for Macro Packages (TMAC Files)

As the classical form tmac.<package_without_m>, of the TMAC file names is quite strange, groff added the following structures:

<package_without_m>.tmac: m<package>.tmac groff_m<package>.tmac

Files Using new Macro Packages

Groff uses the following new macro packages:

<name>.mmse: file with swedish mm macros for groff
<name>.mom: files written in the groff macro package mom
<name>.www: files written in HTML-like groff macros.

Preprocessors and Postprocessors

<name>.hdtbl: a new tbl format. See groff_hdtbl(7).
<name>.grap: files written for the graphical grap processor.
<name>.grn: for including gremlin(1), pictures, see grn(1).
<name>.pdfroff: transform this file with pdfroff of the groff system

COPYING

This file is part of groff, a free software project. You can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License version 2 (GPL2) as published by the Free Software Foundation (FSF).

The license text can be found in the internet at