freebsd man page for whatis

APROPOS(1)						    BSD General Commands Manual 						APROPOS(1)

NAME
     apropos, whatis -- keyword search whatis documentation databases

SYNOPSIS
     apropos [-d] keyword ...
     whatis [-d] keyword ...

DESCRIPTION
     The apropos utility searches a set of databases looking for documentation matching each keyword and displays the results.	The whatis utility
     does the same search but only on complete words.

     -d  Print extra debugging information.

     The keyword is simply passed to grep(1) allowing for extended regular expression matches.

ENVIRONMENT
     The following environment variables affect the execution of apropos:

     MANLOCALES, MANPATH, PATH
	    Used to find the location of the whatis database files. See manpath(1) for additional information.

     PAGER  Program used to display files.  If unset, more -s is used.

DIAGNOSTICS
     The apropos utility exits 0 if a keyword matched and 1 if no keywords are matched or no whatis databases are found.

SEE ALSO
     grep(1), makewhatis(1), man(1), manpath(1), man.conf(5)

BSD
								 September 1, 2010							       BSD