NAME

     whatis - database of online manual pages


SYNOPSIS

     /usr/man/*/whatis
     /usr/man/whatis


DESCRIPTION

     The whatis file in each manual page directory is a  database
     of titles for manual pages.  This database is used by man(1)
     to map titles  to  manual  pages  names.   The  database  is
     created  by  makewhatis(1)  from  the  NAME  sections of the
     manual pages.

     The NAME secions must be simple lines with  no  troff  fluff
     but one backslash like these two:

          whatis \- database of online manual pages
          cawf, nroff \- C version of the  nroff-like,  Amazingly
          Workable (text) Formatter

     These lines are transformed by makewhatis to these two lines
     for the database:

          cawf, nroff (1) - C version of  the  nroff-like,  Amaz-
          ingly Workable (text) Formatter
          whatis (5) - database of online manual pages

     As you can see they are in section number order, so that man
     searches them in section order.

     Each entry is just a single line, restricting the NAME  sec-
     tion to a single line too with just one dash, and commas and
     spaces before the dash as you see above.


SEE ALSO

     man(1), whatis(1), makewhatis(1), man(7).


BUGS

     It seems to be impossible for many manual  page  writers  to
     keep  the  NAME section simple.  They also like to use every
     font available in their documents.  My simple scripts  can't
     read  their  NAME  sections,  my  simple me can't read their
     texts.


AUTHOR

     Kees J. Bot (kjb@cs.vu.nl)