WHATIS(1) NetBSD General Commands Manual WHATIS(1)

NAME

whatisdescribe what a command is

SYNOPSIS

whatis [-C path] [-M path] [-m path] command ...

DESCRIPTION

whatis looks up a given command and gives the header line from the manual page. You can then use the man(1) command to get more information.

The options are as follows:

-C path
Use different man(1) configuration file than the default, /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 databases
/etc/man.conf
man(1) configuration file, used to get location of whatis databases if MANPATH is not set.

SEE ALSO

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

HISTORY

The whatis command appeared in 3.0BSD.
June 6, 1993 NetBSD 5.99