The makewhatis.pl
perl script extracts the name and a short
description from unformatted manpages and creates the `whatis'
database file `whatis.db'. `makewhatis' can read gzip'ed
manpages.
makewhatis
options
The makewhatis
perl script supports the following options.
makewhatis
does not check if old entries are valid.
whatis
.
makewhatis
invocationSynopsis:
makewhatis [-a|-append ] [-h|-help] [-i|-indent column] [-n|-name name] [-o|-outfile file] [-v|-verbose] [directories ...]
Colons are treated as spaces, hence
makewhatis $MANPATH
or
makewhatis `manpath`
are allowed.
makewhatis $MANPATH
Create whatis database for all directories in your `$MANPATH'.
makewhatis -outfile /tmp/mywhatis /usr/local/man $HOME/man
Create whatis database `/tmp/mywhatis'. Traverse directories `/usr/local/man' and `$HOME/man'. Don't create `/usr/local/man/whatis' or `$HOME/man/whatis'.
makewhatis -name windex $HOME/man
Create whatis database `windex' instead of `whatis'. This is useful for SysV systems.
Typical usage in the Geek Gadgets environment:
makewhatis.pl -o /gg/man/whatis.db /gg/man
The `whatis.db' file contains are sorted and unique list of the header lines from all manual pages, eg.
whatis(1) - describe what a command is
Go to the first, previous, next, last section, table of contents.