OpenBSD manual page server

NAME

whatis — describe what a command is

SYNOPSIS

DESCRIPTION

The whatis utility looks up the given commands and shows the header lines from the manual pages. You can then use the man(1) command to get more information. whatis will match on a case insensitive basis and for multiple word entries will match on each individual word.

The options are as follows:

-C file

Specify an alternate configuration file in man.conf(5) format. The default is /etc/man.conf.

-M path

Override the list of standard directories whatis searches for its database named “whatis.db”. The supplied path must be a colon (‘:’) separated list of directories. This search path may also be set using the environment variable MANPATH.

-m path

Augment the list of standard directories whatis searches for its database named “whatis.db”. The supplied path must be a colon-separated list of directories. These directories will be searched before the standard directories or the directories supplied with the -M option or the MANPATH environment variable are searched.

ENVIRONMENT

MANPATH

The standard search path used by man(1) may be overridden by specifying a path in the MANPATH environment variable.

FILES

whatis.db

name of the whatis database

/etc/man.conf

default man(1) configuration file

SEE ALSO

apropos(1), man(1), whereis(1), which(1), man.conf(5), makewhatis(8)

HISTORY

Part of the functionality of whatis was already provided by the former manwhere utility in 1BSD. The whatis command first appeared in 2BSD.

The -M option and the MANPATH variable first appeared in 4.3BSD; -m in 4.3BSD-Reno; and -C in 4.4BSD-Lite1.

AUTHORS

Bill Joy wrote manwhere in 1977 and the original BSD whatis in February 1979.