.\" Man page for whatis
.\"
.\" Copyright (C), 1994, 1995, Graeme W. Wilford. (Wilf.)
.\"
.\" You may distribute under the terms of the GNU General Public
.\" License as specified in the file COPYING that comes with the
.\" man_db distribution.
.\"
.\" Sat Oct 29 13:09:31 GMT 1994  Wilf. (G.Wilford@ee.surrey.ac.uk) 
.\" 
.TH whatis 1 "July 12th, 1995" "2.3.10" "Manual pager utils"
.SH NAME
whatis \- display manual page descriptions
.SH SYNOPSIS
.B whatis 
.RB [\| \-dhV \|] 
.RB [\| \-r \||\| \-w\c 
\|] 
.RB [\| \-m
.IR system \|[\|,.\|.\|.\|]\|]
.RB [\| \-M 
.IR path \|] 
.I name 
\&.\|.\|.
.SH DESCRIPTION
Each manual page has a short description available within
it. 
.B whatis
searches the manual page names and displays the manual page descriptions
of any 
.I name
matched.

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

.B index 
databases are used during the search.
To produce an old style text
.B whatis 
database from the relative
.B index 
database, issue the command:

.B whatis \-M 
.I manpath  
.B \-w  '*' | sort > 
.I manpath/whatis

where 
.I manpath 
is a manual page hierarchy such as 
.IR /usr/man .
.SH OPTIONS
.TP
.B \-d, \-\-debug
Print debugging information.
.TP
.B \-r, \-\-regex
Interpret each 
.I name 
as a regular expression.
If a 
.I name 
matches any part of a page name, a match will be made.
This option causes 
.B whatis 
to be somewhat slower due to the nature of database searches.
.TP
.B \-w, \-\-wildcard
Interpret each 
.I name 
as a pattern containing shell style wildcards.
For a match to be made, an expanded 
.I name 
must match the entire page name.
This option causes
.B whatis
to be somewhat slower due to the nature of database searches.
.\"
.\" Due to the rather silly limit of 6 args per request in some `native'
.\" *roff compilers, we have do the following to get the two-line
.\" hanging tag on one line. .PP to begin a new paragraph, then the
.\" tag, then .RS (start relative indent), the text, finally .RE
.\" (end relative indent).
.\"
.PP
.B \-m 
.I system\c 
.RB \|[\|,.\|.\|.\|]\| ,
.BI \-\-systems= system\c 
\|[\|,.\|.\|.\|]
.RS
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
.B \-m
.BR NewOS .

The
.I 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
.B man
in the argument string.
This option will override the
.RB $ SYSTEM
environment variable.
.RE
.TP
.BI \-M\  path ,\ \-\-manpath= path
Specify an alternate set of colon delimited, manual page hierarchies to
search.
By default,
.B apropos
uses the
.RB $ MANPATH
environment variable unless it is empty or unset in which case it will
determine an appropriate manpath based on your
.RB $ PATH
environment variable.
This option overrides the contents of
.RB $ MANPATH .
.TP
.B \-h, \-\-help
Print a help message and exit.
.TP
.B \-V, \-\-version
Display version and author information.
.SH "EXIT STATUS"
.TP
.B 0
Successful program execution.
.TP
.B 1
Usage, syntax or configuration file error.
.TP
.B 2
Operational error.
.TP
.B 16
No manual pages were found that matched the criteria specified. 
.SH ENVIRONMENT
.TP
.B SYSTEM
If
.RB $ SYSTEM
is set, it will have the same effect as if it had been specified as the
argument to the
.B \-m
option.
.TP
.B MANPATH
If
.RB $ MANPATH
is set, its value is interpreted as the colon delimited, manual page
hierarchy search path to use.
.SH FILES
.TP
.I /usr/man/index.(bt|db|dir|pag)
A traditional global
.I index
database cache.
.TP
.I /var/catman/index.(bt|db|dir|pag)
An alternate or FSSTND
compliant global
.I index
database cache.
.TP
.I /usr/man/\|.\|.\|.\|/whatis
A traditional 
.B whatis
text database. 
.SH "SEE ALSO"
.BR apropos (1),
.BR man (1).
.SH AUTHOR
Wilf. (G.Wilford@ee.surrey.ac.uk)