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5 Whatis database

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.

5.1 makewhatis options

The makewhatis perl script supports the following options.

`-a'
`-append'
Append mode. Don't delete old entries in whatis database. The new database will be sorted without repeated lines and makewhatis does not check if old entries are valid.
`-h'
`-help'
Print options and exit.
`-i column'
`-indent column'
Justify description strings to `column' (default 24).
`-n name'
`-name name'
Use `name' instead of whatis.
`-o file'
`-outfile file'
Write all output to `file' instead of dirname/whatis.
`-v'
`-verbose'
Issue more warnings (to stderr). For every parsed man page write a single char: `.' for an uncompressed page, `*' for a compressed page, and `+' for a link.

5.2 makewhatis invocation

Synopsis:

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

5.3 `whatis.db' file

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


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