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
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)
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