Searching within Man Pages

Just hit / and type your search pattern.

Patterns

Patterns can be regular expressions, for example, you could search for the word “regex” or “Regex” by typing

/[Rr]egex

To find a long option/argument:

/(--)[a-Z]

To cancel the search, hit Ctrl+C.

Iterate through results

Press N for next nmatch, Shift+N for previous match.

To search ALL Man Pages

Use the -K option

-K, --global-apropos       search for text in all pages
man -K "regex"

In the above example, man will find the first man page with a match and open it.
When you close the page with q, you will be prompted with something similar to this:

--Man-- next: wget(1) [ view (return) | skip (Ctrl-D) | quit (Ctrl-C) ]


  • Enter to find the next match in the man page with a match, in this case wget(1)
  • Ctrl+D to skip to the next man page with a match
  • Ctrl+C to quit the search

Sources:

Ask Ubuntu: How can I search within a manpage?