How to jump to a specific heading in a man page?

Question

Example: ssh_config

I've set a filetype in vim for this. I want the help program to be

man

Of course this does not work, if I am on a word, say

ServerAliveCountMax

I get an error, since there is no man pager for ServerAliveCountMax, it's inside ssh_config's manpage.

Is there any way to, from the command line, jump to a string or run some type of command inside man? Much like info actually:

info screen Miscellaneous

will take me to the Miscellaneous section of screens info page.

Is this possible with man? Even running a search would serve...

EDIT: I'm using OSX 10.6.5. with the default man ( /usr/bin/man)

EDIT: I speak a bit of dialect ;) , so I was led to the correct answer:

man -P 'less -p PATTERN' ssh_config  

Is the invocation on OSX/*BSD it would seem.

Answer 1

From the command line for GNU man:

man --pager='less -p ^ENVIRONMENT' man

or for BSD man:

man -P 'less -p ^ENVIRONMENT' man

will jump to the "ENVIRONMENT" heading of the man page for man.

Here is a handy function:

mans () {    # Bash
    local pages string
    if [[ -n $2 ]]
    then
        pages=(${@:2})
        string="$1"
    else
        pages=$1
    fi
    # GNU man
    man ${2:+--pager="less -p \"$heading\" -G"} ${pages[@]}
    # BSD man
    # man ${2:+-P "less -p \"$heading\" -G"} ${pages[@]}
}

Examples:

Use normally:

mans bash

Go to the "DESCRIPTION" heading:

mans ^DESCRIPTION bash

Go to the "DESCRIPTION" heading of each man page in succession (press q and Enter to go to the next one):

mans ^DESCRIPTION bash ksh zsh

Go to the "Parameter Expansion" sub-heading (you can search for any string using regular expressions):

mans '^ *Parameter Expansion' bash

Search for the most recent regex you've used in Less:

mans '' bash

The match that you searched for won't be highlighted. If you'd prefer it to be, just remove the -G from the options to less.

This function makes no attempt to handle the other arguments and options that man supports.

Answer 2

In man you can type / followed by a pattern to match e.g. to find the DEFAULT KEY BINDINGS section of the screen man page you would type

/^DEFAULT KEY BINDINGS

Answer 3

/ in less will do a forward search, and ? will do a reverse search. Press h to see a full list.