whatis(1) [osf1 man page]
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)
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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