php.net最近更新了php文档，比较有用的是新增的pman工具。pman是一个命令行小工具，方便查看php函数的本地帮助文档，但是不包含php.net的评论数据。
简单的试用心得如下:
安装pman
使用传说中的pear来安装pman
sudo pear install doc.php.net/pman
如果pear版本比较老，需要先升级pear才可以继续
sudo pear upgrade pear
pman使用方法
pman的使用方法很傻瓜，比如我们想查看strlen的帮助信息:
pman strlen
帮助文本的内容是彩色的，能和chm版本的php帮助文档媲美。pman的详细使用帮助如下
#pman --help
man, version 1.6c
usage: man [-adfhktwW] [section] [-M path] [-P pager] [-S list]
[-m system] [-p string] name ...
a : find all matching entries
c : do not use cat file
d : print gobs of debugging information
D : as for -d, but also display the pages
f : same as whatis(1)
h : print this help message
k : same as apropos(1)
K : search for a string in all pages
t : use troff to format pages for printing
w : print location of man page(s) that would be displayed
(if no name given: print directories that would be searched)
W : as for -w, but display filenames only
C file : use `file' as configuration file
M path : set search path for manual pages to `path'
P pager : use program `pager' to display pages
S list : colon separated section list
m system : search for alternate system's man pages
p string : string tells which preprocessors to run
e - [n]eqn(1) p - pic(1) t - tbl(1)
g - grap(1) r - refer(1) v - vgrind(1)
还有一个好处是在vim里查看php帮助信息更方便了，结合完美
:!pman strlen