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)