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WHATIS(1)                                         Manual pager utils                                        WHATIS(1)



NAME
       whatis - display manual page descriptions

SYNOPSIS
       whatis [-dlv?V] [-r|-w] [-s list] [-m system[,...]] [-M path] [-L locale] [-C file] name ...

DESCRIPTION
       Each  manual page has a short description available within it.  whatis searches the manual page names and dis‐
       plays the manual page descriptions of any name matched.

       name may contain wildcards (-w) or be a regular expression (-r).  Using these options, it may be necessary  to
       quote the name or escape (\) the special characters to stop the shell from interpreting them.

       index databases are used during the search, and are updated by the mandb program.  Depending on your installa‐
       tion, this may be run by a periodic cron job, or may need to be run manually after new manual pages have  been
       installed.  To produce an old style text whatis database from the relative index database, issue the command:

       whatis -M manpath -w '*' | sort > manpath/whatis

       where manpath is a manual page hierarchy such as /usr/man.

OPTIONS
       -d, --debug
              Print debugging information.

       -v, --verbose
              Print verbose warning messages.

       -r, --regex
              Interpret  each  name as a regular expression.  If a name matches any part of a page name, a match will
              be made.  This option causes whatis to be somewhat slower due to the nature of database searches.

       -w, --wildcard
              Interpret each name as a pattern containing shell style wildcards.  For a match to be made, an expanded
              name  must  match  the  entire  page  name.  This option causes whatis to be somewhat slower due to the
              nature of database searches.

       -l, --long
              Do not trim output to the terminal width.  Normally, output will be truncated to the terminal width  to
              avoid ugly results from poorly-written NAME sections.

       -s list, --sections list, --section list
              Search  only  the  given manual sections.  list is a colon- or comma-separated list of sections.  If an
              entry in list is a simple section, for example "3",  then  the  displayed  list  of  descriptions  will
              include  pages  in  sections "3", "3perl", "3x", and so on; while if an entry in list has an extension,
              for example "3perl", then the list will only include pages in that exact part of the manual section.

       -m system[,...], --systems=system[,...]
              If this system has access to other operating system's manual page names, they  can  be  accessed  using
              this option.  To search NewOS's manual page names, use the option -m NewOS.

              The  system  specified  can  be  a combination of comma delimited operating system names.  To include a
              search of the native operating system's manual page names, include the system name man in the  argument
              string.  This option will override the $SYSTEM environment variable.

       -M path, --manpath=path
       -C file, --config-file=file
              Use this user configuration file rather than the default of ~/.manpath.

       -?, --help
              Print a help message and exit.

       --usage
              Print a short usage message and exit.

       -V, --version
              Display version information.

EXIT STATUS
       0      Successful program execution.

       1      Usage, syntax or configuration file error.

       2      Operational error.

       16     Nothing was found that matched the criteria specified.

ENVIRONMENT
       SYSTEM If $SYSTEM is set, it will have the same effect as if it had been specified as the argument to  the  -m
              option.

       MANPATH
              If  $MANPATH  is set, its value is interpreted as the colon-delimited manual page hierarchy search path
              to use.

       MANWIDTH
              If $MANWIDTH is set, its value is used as the terminal width (see the --long option).   If  it  is  not
              set,  the  terminal  width will be calculated using an ioctl(2) if available, the value of $COLUMNS, or
              falling back to 80 characters if all else fails.

FILES
       /usr/share/man/index.(bt|db|dir|pag)
              A traditional global index database cache.

       /var/cache/man/index.(bt|db|dir|pag)
              An FHS compliant global index database cache.

       /usr/share/man/.../whatis
              A traditional whatis text database.

SEE ALSO
       apropos(1), man(1), mandb(8)

AUTHOR
       Wilf. ([email protected]).
       Fabrizio Polacco ([email protected]).
       Colin Watson ([email protected]).