osf1 man page for whatis

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)