Where are the man pages for C++?

Question

Does documentation for C++ exist in Linux? I want something like the man pages of C. For example, docs for string, stl, iostream, ifstream, etc.?

You can just search up "c++ " Most of the time this will result in a page from cplusplus.com — flight, Mar 14 '11 at 01:11
If only he had asked a more specific question, we could have pointed him to lmgtfy... — Don Branson, Mar 14 '11 at 01:16
Just yesterday I found myself wishing libstdc++ provided manpages rather than forcing me to use a web browser to find documentation. — sarnold, Mar 14 '11 at 01:42
@Don Branson, thanks! but, i can see many people that could answer perfectly... — fpointbin, Mar 14 '11 at 01:43
To the commenters above, have you ever done development somewhere that you had difficult or impossible access to the internet? Imagine that your only access is 25 to 75 steps away, on a machine shared by other people that use it throughout the day. And this is the only place that you can access the internet. No wifi or cell phone is available. And no modifications to the network are possible. — Pulseczar, Aug 14 '17 at 20:40
For other readers, you can clone this [repo](https://github.com/jeaye/stdman) then `./configure` and `make install` on your system. It will install documentation from cppreference.com available via your `man` command ie. `man std::queue`. Quite handy. — haxpor, Jul 05 '18 at 15:59

Matteo Italia · Accepted Answer · 2021-08-03T12:11:35.143

If you use the "normal" libstdc++ shipped with g++, its documentation is available online here.

Most Linux distributions make it also available offline as a particular package; for Debian-derived distros, for example, it's libstdc++-6-<version>-doc (e.g. on my Ubuntu machine I have libstdc++-6-4.4-doc installed). In general the documentation will be put somewhere like /usr/share/doc/libstdc++-6-4.4-doc.

This about implementation-specific documentation; for compiler-agnostic docs, instead, many sites on the Internet provide reference documentation for the standard library.

One of the most referenced is nowadays cppreference.com, that is actively maintained, tends to be very faithful to the standard and shows well the differences between the various standard versions; it can be a bit intimidating to newbies, though.

cplusplus.com historically was one of the most used (especially as it is very "liked" by search engines), but was known to contain several errors or incorrect simplifications; I don't know if it got any better in these last years.

Also, the C++ library section on msdn.microsoft.com has got much better in the recent years in separating what are the Microsoft-specific details from what the standard dictates.

Finally, if you want precision up to the paranoia, the ultimate normative document is the C++ standard, that is sold from ISO, ANSI and BSI (for a quite high price); there are however several drafts available for free, which are more than good enough for "casual use".

Thank you! It was a perfect answer to my doubt... I was searching it for a long time, but i couldnt find any answer like this... — fpointbin, Mar 14 '11 at 01:49
IMO the best compiler-agnostic reference is http://en.cppreference.com/w/ it is mostly accurate, and it shows whether any given feature is C++03 or C++11 — Fabio Fracassi, Aug 07 '12 at 11:00
@FabioFracassi Yes, and in november 2014 the offline version of the documentation at cppreference.com was added to Ubuntu Vivid: `apt-get install cppreference-doc-en-html`. — zwets, Oct 09 '15 at 07:05
IMHO this is a good resource too https://github.com/aitjcize/cppman — Calamar, Apr 22 '16 at 19:01
There's also a set of C++ man pages that can be copied from OpenSolaris, but they're incomplete to say the least. — Throw Away Account, Nov 27 '19 at 01:01

score 42 · Answer 2 · edited Feb 01 '19 at 13:40

42

In Ubuntu, after installing libstdc++-6-x.x-doc, these docs are available via man, examples(libstdc++-4.8-doc)

man std::list
man std::weak_ptr
man std::ios_base

To get a list of these entries, use

apropos -r '^std' | vi -

This command gets all man entries beginning with std and sends them to vi.

==========

Update: as of libstdc++-4.8-doc, the prefix is std:: instead of std_.

edited Feb 01 '19 at 13:40

Chris

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answered Oct 31 '13 at 12:12

don't panic

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Doesn't appear to work in Ubuntu 12.04. I.e. I installed this package, but your example commands don't give the manual pages. – Ruslan Mar 06 '14 at 07:42
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@Ruslan I have updated my answer, the prefix changed to `std::` instead of `std_` – don't panic Mar 06 '14 at 11:23
Works for me on Ubuntu 16.04, using the `man std::list` syntax. – BeeOnRope Jan 17 '17 at 02:19

score 13 · Answer 3 · edited Nov 14 '13 at 22:11

13

cppman is a C++ manpage formatter available on Github.

On request, it generates manpages from cplusplus.com, and it is quite good at it. Your manpage viewer will be cppman instead of man, though, and you still need to be online.

edited Nov 14 '13 at 22:11

Iain Samuel McLean Elder

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answered Aug 07 '12 at 09:16

mic_e

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You can now cache all of them for off-line viewing. It takes approx 20 minutes. – Dilawar Apr 16 '13 at 19:29
Cppman has an option (-m true) to export its documents to man. – John P Aug 18 '15 at 07:23
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And the command for offline caching, after the [installation1](https://github.com/aitjcize/cppman/wiki/Installing-from-Ubuntu-PPA) or [installation2](https://github.com/aitjcize/cppman#installation) is simply `cppman -c` – Loves Probability Jun 10 '17 at 10:31

score 8 · Answer 4 · answered Mar 14 '11 at 01:15

8

Install the man pages:

$ sudo apt-get install libstdc++6-4.4-doc

answered Mar 14 '11 at 01:15

ukhardy

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Assuming your distribution uses apt for package management. – Sam Miller Mar 14 '11 at 01:17
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Just for the sake of precision, these are not manpages, but HTML docs (put in `/usr/share/doc/libstdc++4.4-doc`). – Matteo Italia Mar 14 '11 at 01:18

score 6 · Answer 5 · answered Mar 14 '11 at 01:10

6

The C++ standard library is documented at http://www.cplusplus.com/reference/. Your implementation might bring it's own documentation. For example libstdc++ from the GNU Compiler Collection is documented at http://gcc.gnu.org/onlinedocs/libstdc++/. Look into the source distribution of the specific library to find out if and where the documentation is.

answered Mar 14 '11 at 01:10

Oswald

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Unfortunately, cplusplus.com is really outdated in the meantime. – tommsch Jun 24 '21 at 10:38

zwets · Answer 6 · 2015-10-09T07:00:47.670

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On Ubuntu an offline copy of the excellent documentation at http://cppreference.com is available in the packages cppreference-doc-en-html (HTML) and cppreference-doc-en-qch (Qt Help format).

To install:

sudo apt-get install cppreference-doc-en-html

edited Oct 09 '15 at 07:00

answered Oct 09 '15 at 06:54

zwets

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*Not available as of Nov 24, 2016. – silent_dev Nov 24 '16 at 14:27
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I installed `cppreference-doc-en-html` in Ubuntu, but how should I use it? Doing `man fputs` will open Linux Programmer's Manual and not cppreference documentation. In other words, where are cppreference docs stored? – builder-7000 Apr 08 '18 at 06:43
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@Sergio `dpkg -L cppreference-doc-en-html` will tell you the contents of the package. – zwets Apr 09 '18 at 05:29
@zwets Thank you! That solved the problem now I can access the documentation. – builder-7000 Apr 09 '18 at 06:31
How do you access them in linux ? – cassepipe May 01 '22 at 11:56

Unacoder · Answer 7 · 2015-04-28T02:04:31.963

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On RHEL 6 the package libstdc++-docs installs documentation in /usr/share/doc AND man pages:

sudo yum install -y libstdc++-docs

now I can: man std::string

for example.

edited Apr 28 '15 at 02:04

answered Mar 12 '15 at 03:43

Unacoder

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score 1 · Answer 8 · answered Mar 14 '11 at 01:12

You'll want to pay close attention to the version of your compiler; on recent linux distributions you're likely using g++ v4.3, or maybe v4.4, but some of the newer C++0x features are in g++ v4.5, so depending on the features you are playing with, you may run into issues on that front.

Where are the man pages for C++?

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