MAKEWHATIS(8)						      System Manager's Manual						     MAKEWHATIS(8)

NAME

       makewhatis - Create the whatis database

SYNOPSIS

       makewhatis [-u] [-v] [-w] [-s sections ] [-c [catpath]] [manpath]

DESCRIPTION

       makewhatis  reads all the manual pages contained in the given sections of manpath or the preformatted pages contained in the given sections
       of catpath.  For each page, it writes a line in the whatis database; each line consists of the name of the page and  a  short  description,
       separated by a dash. The description is extracted using the content of the NAME section of the manual page.

       Since  other  languages	use  a different term for the NAME section, makewhatis recognizes the equivalent terms in Czech, Italian, Finnish,
       French, German and Spanish.

       If no manpath argument is given, /usr/man is assumed by default.

OPTIONS

       -u     Update database with new pages.

       -v     Verbose output

       -w     Use manpath obtained from `man --path`

       -s sections
	      Looks in the sections of manpath or catpath.  If the option is absent, its value is assumed to be '1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 n l'

       -c catpath
	      The preformatted manual pages located in catpath are scanned. If the argument is not provided, it is assumed to be the first  exist-
	      ing directory between /usr/man/preformat and /usr/man.

EXAMPLES

       To rebuild only /usr/X11R6/man/whatis and /usr/local/man/whatis

	      makewhatis /usr/X11R6/man /usr/local/man

       To rebuild all the databases, including those of the Finnish, French and Italian translations

	      LANGUAGE=fi:fr:it makewhatis -w

BUGS

       makewhatis may not handle too well manual pages written with non-standard troff macros, such as the Tcl/Tk pages.

       makewhatis does not work on preformatted translations.

SEE ALSO

       apropos(1), man(1), whatis(1)

								  22 January 1999						     MAKEWHATIS(8)