whatis

whatis(1)                     Manual pager utils                     whatis(1)



NAME
       whatis - display manual page descriptions

SYNOPSIS
       whatis [-dhV] [-r|-w] [-m system[,...]] [-M path] [-C file] name ...

DESCRIPTION
       Each  manual  page has a short description available within it.  whatis
       searches the manual page names and displays the  manual  page  descrip-
       tions of any name matched.

       name may contain wildcards (-w) or be a regular expression (-r).  Using
       these options, it may be necessary to quote the name or escape (\)  the
       special characters to stop the shell from interpreting them.

       index  databases  are  used during the search.  To produce an old style
       text whatis database from the relative index database, issue  the  com-
       mand:

       whatis -M manpath -w '*' | sort > manpath/whatis

       where manpath is a manual page hierarchy such as /usr/man.

OPTIONS
       -d, --debug
              Print debugging information.

       -v, --verbose
              Print verbose warning messages.

       -r, --regex
              Interpret  each name as a regular expression.  If a name matches
              any part of a page name, a match  will  be  made.   This  option
              causes  whatis  to  be  somewhat  slower  due  to  the nature of
              database searches.

       -w, --wildcard
              Interpret each name as a pattern containing  shell  style  wild-
              cards.   For a match to be made, an expanded name must match the
              entire page name.  This option  causes  whatis  to  be  somewhat
              slower due to the nature of database searches.

       -m system[,...], --systems=system[,...]
              If  this  system  has  access to other operating system's manual
              page names, they can be accessed using this option.   To  search
              NewOS's manual page names, use the option -m NewOS.

              The  system  specified  can  be a combination of comma delimited
              operating system names.  To include a search of the native oper-
              ating system's manual page names, include the system name man in
              the argument string.  This  option  will  override  the  $SYSTEM
              environment variable.

       -M path, --manpath=path
              Specify  an alternate set of colon-delimited manual page hierar-
              chies to search.  By default, apropos uses the $MANPATH environ-
              ment  variable,  unless  it  is empty or unset, in which case it
              will determine an appropriate manpath based on your $PATH  envi-
              ronment  variable.   This option overrides the contents of $MAN-
              PATH.

       -C file, --config-file=file
              Use this user configuration file  rather  than  the  default  of
              ~/.manpath.

       -h, --help
              Print a help message and exit.

       -V, --version
              Display version information.

EXIT STATUS
       0      Successful program execution.

       1      Usage, syntax or configuration file error.

       2      Operational error.

       16     No  manual pages were found that matched the criteria specified.

ENVIRONMENT
       SYSTEM If $SYSTEM is set, it will have the same effect  as  if  it  had
              been specified as the argument to the -m option.

       MANPATH
              If $MANPATH is set, its value is interpreted as the colon-delim-
              ited manual page hierarchy search path to use.

FILES
       /usr/share/man/index.(bt|db|dir|pag)
              A traditional global index database cache.

       /var/cache/man/index.(bt|db|dir|pag)
              An alternate or FSSTND compliant global index database cache.

       /usr/share/man/.../whatis
              A traditional whatis text database.

SEE ALSO
       apropos(1), man(1).

AUTHOR
       Wilf. (G.Wilford AT ee.uk).
       Fabrizio Polacco (fpolacco AT debian.org).



2.4.2                             2003-09-20                         whatis(1)