Skip to content

Manpage formatting tweaks #132338

New issue

Have a question about this project? Sign up for a free GitHub account to open an issue and contact its maintainers and the community.

Sign up for GitHub

By clicking “Sign up for GitHub”, you agree to our terms of service and privacy statement. We’ll occasionally send you account related emails.

Already on GitHub? Sign in to your account

Open
stefanor wants to merge 2 commits into
base: main
Choose a base branch
from
+17 −16
Open

Manpage formatting tweaks #132338

Changes from all commits
Commits
Show all changes
2 commits
Select commit Hold shift + click to select a range
b01a560
Manpage formatting tweaks
stefanor Apr 9, 2025
0b280a4
Corrections due to review
stefanor May 20, 2026
File filter

Filter by extension

Filter by extension
Conversations
Failed to load comments.
Loading
Jump to
Jump to file
Failed to load files.
Loading
Diff view
Diff view
33 changes: 17 additions & 16 deletions Misc/python.man
View file
Open in desktop
Original file line number Diff line number Diff line change
Expand Up @@ -162,7 +162,7 @@ compilation options).
Ignore environment variables like PYTHONPATH and PYTHONHOME that modify
the behavior of the interpreter.
.TP
.B \-h ", " \-? ", "\-\-help
.BR \-h ", " \-? ", " \-\-help
Prints the usage for the interpreter executable and exits.
.TP
.B "\-\-help\-env"
Expand All @@ -171,7 +171,6 @@ Prints help about Python-specific environment variables and exits.
.B "\-\-help\-xoptions"
Prints help about implementation-specific \fB\-X\fP options and exits.
.TP
.TP
.B "\-\-help\-all"
Prints complete usage information and exits.
.TP
Expand Down Expand Up @@ -243,7 +242,7 @@ twice, print a message for each file that is checked for when
searching for a module. Also provides information on module cleanup
at exit.
.TP
.B \-V ", " \-\-version
.BR \-V ", " \-\-version
Prints the Python version number of the executable and exits. When given
twice, print more information about the build.

Expand All @@ -256,22 +255,24 @@ to
The simplest settings apply a particular action unconditionally to all warnings
emitted by a process (even those that are otherwise ignored by default):

-Wdefault # Warn once per call location
-Werror # Convert to exceptions
-Walways # Warn every time
-Wall # Same as -Walways
-Wmodule # Warn once per calling module
-Wonce # Warn once per Python process
-Wignore # Never warn
.nf
\-Wdefault # Warn once per call location
\-Werror # Convert to exceptions
\-Walways # Warn every time
\-Wall # Same as \-Walways
\-Wmodule # Warn once per calling module
\-Wonce # Warn once per Python process
\-Wignore # Never warn
.fi
Comment on lines +258 to +266
Copy link
Copy Markdown
Member

@encukou encukou May 20, 2026

Choose a reason for hiding this comment

The reason will be displayed to describe this comment to others. Learn more.

This doesn't show up in the render diffs; what does it do?

Copy link
Copy Markdown
Contributor Author

@stefanor stefanor May 20, 2026

Choose a reason for hiding this comment

The reason will be displayed to describe this comment to others. Learn more.

Temporarily turns off "line filling", for a code block.

The practical effect here is that if it wraps a long line, it wraps all the way to the left margin rather than being indented to the same level. I'm not 100% sold on this being an improvement, but I have seen it described as being useful for code blocks.


The action names can be abbreviated as desired and the interpreter will resolve
them to the appropriate action name. For example,
.B \-Wi
is the same as
.B \-Wignore .
.BR \-Wignore .

The full form of argument is:
.IB action:message:category:module:lineno
.IB action : message : category : module : lineno

Empty fields match all values; trailing empty fields may be omitted. For
example
Expand Down Expand Up @@ -457,7 +458,7 @@ is an empty string; if
is used,
.I sys.argv[0]
contains the string
.I '\-c'.
.RI ' \-c '.
Note that options interpreted by the Python interpreter itself
are not placed in
.IR sys.argv .
Expand Down Expand Up @@ -584,8 +585,8 @@ purpose is to allow repeatable hashing, such as for selftests for the
interpreter itself, or to allow a cluster of python processes to share hash
values.

The integer must be a decimal number in the range [0,4294967295]. Specifying
the value 0 will disable hash randomization.
The integer must be a decimal number in the range [0,4\|294\|967\|295].
Specifying the value 0 will disable hash randomization.
Comment on lines +588 to +589
Copy link
Copy Markdown
Member

@encukou encukou May 20, 2026

Choose a reason for hiding this comment

The reason will be displayed to describe this comment to others. Learn more.

This also doesn't show up in the diffs.

Copy link
Copy Markdown
Contributor Author

@stefanor stefanor May 20, 2026

Choose a reason for hiding this comment

The reason will be displayed to describe this comment to others. Learn more.

These are "thin-spaces". Only visible in renderings like PDF:
image

.IP PYTHONHOME
Change the location of the standard Python libraries. By default, the
libraries are searched in ${prefix}/lib/python<version> and
Expand All @@ -607,7 +608,7 @@ This is equivalent to the \fB\-X int_max_str_digits=\fINUMBER\fR option.
.IP PYTHONIOENCODING
If this is set before running the interpreter, it overrides the encoding used
for stdin/stdout/stderr, in the syntax
.IB encodingname ":" errorhandler
.IB encodingname : errorhandler
The
.IB errorhandler
part is optional and has the same meaning as in str.encode. For stderr, the
Expand Down
Loading