NAME
whatis
—
describe what a command is
SYNOPSIS
whatis |
[-C file]
[-M path]
[-m path]
[-S arch]
[-s section]
name ... |
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 manual page
names 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 “mandoc.db”. The supplied path must be a colon (‘:
’) separated list of directories. This search path may also be set using the environment variableMANPATH
. -m
path- Augment the list of standard directories
whatis
searches for its database named “mandoc.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 theMANPATH
environment variable are searched. -S
arch- Restrict the search to pages for the specified machine(1) architecture. arch is case insensitive. By default, pages for all architectures are shown.
-s
section- Restrict the search to the specified section of the manual. By default, pages from all sections are shown. See man(1) for a listing of sections.
ENVIRONMENT
MANPATH
- The standard search path used by
man(1) may be overridden by specifying a path in the
MANPATH
environment variable. IfMANPATH
begins with a colon, it is appended to the default list; if it ends with a colon, it is prepended to the default list; or if it contains two adjacent colons, the standard search path is inserted between the colons. If none of these conditions are met, it overrides the standard search path.
FILES
- mandoc.db
- name of the makewhatis(8) keyword database
- /etc/man.conf
- default man(1) configuration file
EXIT STATUS
The whatis
utility exits 0 on
success, and >0 if an error occurs.
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. It was rewritten from
scratch for OpenBSD 5.6.
The -M
option and the
MANPATH
variable first appeared in
4.3BSD; -m
in
4.3BSD-Reno; -C
in
4.4BSD-Lite1; and -S
and
-s
in OpenBSD 5.6.
AUTHORS
Bill Joy wrote
manwhere
in 1977 and the original
BSD whatis
in February 1979.
The current version was written by Kristaps Dzonsons
<kristaps@bsd.lv>.