36

The man page for mandb refers to stray cats:

-s, --no-straycats
       Do not spend time looking  for  or  adding  information  to  the
       databases regarding stray cats.

There is no explanation of what a stray cat is. What's up?

Braiam
  • 35,991
tbodt
  • 495

2 Answers2

29

From the Glossary in /usr/share/doc/man-db/man-db-manual.txt (source is manual/glossary.me):

cat page
A formatted manual page suitable for viewing on a vt100-type terminal.

stray cat page
A cat page that does not have a relative manual page on the system, i.e. only the cat page was supplied or the manual page was removed after the cat page had been created.
Cristian Ciupitu
  • 2,510
jasonwryan
  • 73,126
  • 2
    That explains the catman command too – Andy Feb 21 '15 at 02:02
  • I don't understand. A "cat page" is a manual page (as per your answer). Then (also per your answer) a "stray cat page" is "a cat page that does not have a relative manual page". The answer affirms that a "cat page" is a manual page (with some specific characteristic). What is the meaning of a cat page (that is a manual page) not having a relative manual page? – Rafael Eyng Dec 11 '19 at 22:39
  • You missed the word "formatted". – JdeBP Jan 11 '20 at 18:28
  • Probably "related" (corresponding, matching) would be a better word than "relative." – x-yuri Jan 22 '21 at 18:07
6

A cat page is a particular type of man page. It is faster to display than a normal man page, but requires more hard drive space. They are created by using the catman command. This reads the 'regular' man pages and produces new pages with a different internal structure, called cat pages. If you create cat page(s) and then remove the original man page(s), you'll have "stray" cat page(s).

jesse_b
  • 37,005
TheGurkha
  • 61
  • 1
  • 2
  • For the sake of completion, cat pages are usually written in 'pure' ASCII and reside on a directory structure similar/mirroring the one of man, also with the extension corresponding to the section (e.g. ffmpeg.1). – Gwyneth Llewelyn Aug 24 '21 at 11:37