whatis

Section: December 15, 1992 (1)
Updated: USER COMMANDS
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NAME

whatis - display a one-line summary about a command or filename

SYNOPSIS

whatis [-M path ] command ...

DESCRIPTION

whatis tries to locate manual pages related to the given commands. It strips the leading pathname components and extension from each command , andd then prints all summaries from the whatis database containing the resulting basename or names. You can then run the man(1) command to get more information. If the line starts `name ( section ) ...' you can do `man section name' to get the documentation for it. Try `whatis catman.ttp' and then you should do `man 8 catman' to get the manual page for catman(8).

whatis is actually just the -f option to the man(1) command.

whatis uses the whatis database. This database can be created using the -w option of catman(8).

OPTIONS

-M path

: Change the search path for manual pages. path is a (semi)colon-separated list of subdirectories thar contain manual page directory subtrees. For example, /usr/man;/usr/local/man makes whatis search the whatis database in both /usr/man and /usr/local/man.

ENVIRONMENT

MANPATH: If set, its value overrides /usr/man as the default search path. (The -M flag, in turn, overrides this value.)

FILES

/usr/man/whatis: whatis data base

NOTES

whatis uses the /usr/man/whatis database, which is created by catman(8).

BUGS

whatis has not been tested under TOS (only MiNT).

whatis is not safe in respect to strings. A pathname that is too long can therefore crash whatis. The current limit is 255 characters, which should be long enough for must purposes.

whatis behaves differently from the UN*X version in several respects.

AUTHOR

Hildo Biersma (schuller@dutiag.tudelft.nl)

VERSION

This is version 0.2, the second released version.

This document was created by man2html, using the manual pages.
Time: 23:26:11 GMT, January 03, 2023