Linux and UNIX Man Pages

Linux & Unix Commands - Search Man Pages

whatis(5) [minix man page]

WHATIS(5)							File Formats Manual							 WHATIS(5)

NAME
whatis - database of online manual pages SYNOPSIS
/usr/man/*/whatis /usr/man/whatis DESCRIPTION
The whatis file in each manual page directory is a database of titles for manual pages. This database is used by man(1) to map titles to manual pages names. The database is created by makewhatis(1) from the NAME sections of the manual pages. The NAME secions must be simple lines with no troff fluff but one backslash like these two: whatis - database of online manual pages cawf, nroff - C version of the nroff-like, Amazingly Workable (text) Formatter These lines are transformed by makewhatis to these two lines for the database: cawf, nroff (1) - C version of the nroff-like, Amazingly Workable (text) Formatter whatis (5) - database of online manual pages As you can see they are in section number order, so that man searches them in section order. Each entry is just a single line, restricting the NAME section to a single line too with just one dash, and commas and spaces before the dash as you see above. SEE ALSO
man(1), whatis(1), makewhatis(1), man(7). BUGS
It seems to be impossible for many manual page writers to keep the NAME section simple. They also like to use every font available in their documents. My simple scripts can't read their NAME sections, my simple me can't read their texts. AUTHOR
Kees J. Bot (kjb@cs.vu.nl) WHATIS(5)

Check Out this Related Man Page

CATMAN(8)						    BSD System Manager's Manual 						 CATMAN(8)

NAME
catman -- format cat pages from man pages SYNOPSIS
catman [-knpsw] [-m directory] [sections] catman [-knpsw] [-M directory] [sections] DESCRIPTION
catman creates formatted versions of the on-line manual pages from their nroff(1) source. Manual pages whose formatted versions are missing or out of date are regenerated. If manual pages are regenerated, catman also regenerates the whatis database. The optional sections argument is one word, and contains the section numbers of all the sections to be checked. For example, if sections is ``13f8'', the manual pages in sections 1, 3f, and 8 will be checked and regenerated. If no sections argument is provided, catman will try to operate on all of the known manual sections. The options are as follows: -k Ignore errors from nroff when building manpages. -n Do not create the whatis database. -p Display the commands that would have been executed, but do not actually execute them. -s Perform work silently; do not echo commands as they are executed. This flag is ignored if -p is specified. -w Only create the whatis database. -m directory Add directory to the set of directories to be updated. -M directory Update manual pages in directory. SEE ALSO
apropos(1), man(1), whatis(1) BUGS
Currently does not handle hard links. BSD
July 30, 1993 BSD
Man Page

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