zsoelim

Process .so requests in file

$ zsoelim [file.man]

$ cat [file.man] | zsoelim

$ zcat [file.man.gz] | zsoelim

zsoelim [-CVh] [file...]

zsoelim processes .so requests in roff/man page source files. The .so directive includes the content of another file, similar to C's #include.
When man pages contain lines like .so man3/other.3, zsoelim reads and substitutes the referenced file's content. This is used in the man page system to avoid duplicating documentation for aliases.
The "z" prefix indicates support for gzip-compressed input files, typical of the man page system where sources may be stored compressed.
zsoelim searches for included files in the standard man page hierarchy and processes them recursively.

-C, --compatible

Operate in groff compatible mode

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Primarily used as part of the man page processing pipeline, rarely invoked directly.
File paths in .so directives are relative to the man directory structure, not the current directory.
The tool expects roff/man page format input. It's not a general-purpose file includer.

soelim(1), man(1), groff(1), zcat(1)