whatis(1) General Commands Manual whatis(1)
NAME
whatis - Describes a command's function
SYNOPSIS
whatis [-M pathname] keyword...
The whatis command looks up a keyword, which may be a command, system call, library function, or special filename and displays the NAME
line from the reference page. You can then issue the man command to display additional information.
OPTIONS
Specifies an alternative search path. The search path is a list of directories, separated by : (colons), in which whatis expects to find
the standard manual subdirectories. (For more information, see the man command.)
DESCRIPTION
The whatis command is equivalent to the man command with the -f option.
EXAMPLES
To find out what function the ls command performs, enter: whatis ls
FILES
Keyword database. Creates the whatis keyword database. Used by mkwhatis to extract keywords from the manuals.
SEE ALSO
Commands: apropos(1), man(1), catman(8)
whatis(1)
