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VersionsWHATIS(1) Manual pager utils WHATIS(1)
NAME
whatis - display one-line manual page descriptions
SYNOPSIS
whatis [-dlv?V] [-r|-w] [-s list] [-m system[,...]] [-M path] [-L locale] [-C file] name ...
DESCRIPTION
Each manual page has a short description available within it. whatis searches the manual page names and displays
the manual page descriptions of any name matched.
name may contain wildcards (-w) or be a regular expression (-r). Using these options, it may be necessary to
quote the name or escape (\) the special characters to stop the shell from interpreting them.
index databases are used during the search, and are updated by the mandb program. Depending on your installa‐
tion, this may be run by a periodic cron job, or may need to be run manually after new manual pages have been in‐
stalled. To produce an old style text whatis database from the relative index database, issue the command:
whatis -M manpath -w '*' | sort > manpath/whatis
where manpath is a manual page hierarchy such as /usr/man.
OPTIONS
-d, --debug
Print debugging information.
-v, --verbose
Print verbose warning messages.
-r, --regex
Interpret each name as a regular expression. If a name matches any part of a page name, a match will be
made. This option causes whatis to be somewhat slower due to the nature of database searches.
-w, --wildcard
Interpret each name as a pattern containing shell style wildcards. For a match to be made, an expanded
name must match the entire page name. This option causes whatis to be somewhat slower due to the nature
of database searches.
-l, --long
Do not trim output to the terminal width. Normally, output will be truncated to the terminal width to
avoid ugly results from poorly-written NAME sections.
-s list, --sections=list, --section=list
Search only the given manual sections. list is a colon- or comma-separated list of sections. If an entry
in list is a simple section, for example "3", then the displayed list of descriptions will include pages
in sections "3", "3perl", "3x", and so on; while if an entry in list has an extension, for example
"3perl", then the list will only include pages in that exact part of the manual section.
-m system[,...], --systems=system[,...]
If this system has access to other operating systems' manual page names, they can be accessed using this
option. To search NewOS's manual page names, use the option -m NewOS.
The 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 man in the argument string.
This option will override the $SYSTEM environment variable.
-M path, --manpath=path
Specify an alternate set of colon-delimited manual page hierarchies to search. By default, whatis uses
the $MANPATH environment variable, unless it is empty or unset, in which case it will determine an appro‐
priate manpath based on your $PATH environment variable. This option overrides the contents of $MANPATH.
-L locale, --locale=locale
whatis will normally determine your current locale by a call to the C function setlocale(3) which interro‐
gates various environment variables, possibly including $LC_MESSAGES and $LANG. To temporarily override
the determined value, use this option to supply a locale string directly to whatis. Note that it will not
take effect until the search for pages actually begins. Output such as the help message will always be
displayed in the initially determined locale.
-C file, --config-file=file
Use this user configuration file rather than the default of ~/.manpath.
-?, --help
Print a help message and exit.
--usage
Print a short usage message and exit.
-V, --version
Display version information.
EXIT STATUS
0 Successful program execution.
1 Usage, syntax or configuration file error.
2 Operational error.
16 Nothing was found that matched the criteria specified.
ENVIRONMENT
SYSTEM If $SYSTEM is set, it will have the same effect as if it had been specified as the argument to the -m op‐
tion.
MANPATH
If $MANPATH is set, its value is interpreted as the colon-delimited manual page hierarchy search path to
use.
See the SEARCH PATH section of manpath(5) for the default behaviour and details of how this environment
variable is handled.
MANWIDTH
If $MANWIDTH is set, its value is used as the terminal width (see the --long option). If it is not set,
the terminal width will be calculated using the value of $COLUMNS, and ioctl(2) if available, or falling
back to 80 characters if all else fails.
FILES
/usr/share/man/index.(bt|db|dir|pag)
A traditional global index database cache.
/var/cache/man/index.(bt|db|dir|pag)
An FHS compliant global index database cache.
/usr/share/man/.../whatis
A traditional whatis text database.
SEE ALSO
apropos(1), man(1), mandb(8)
AUTHOR
Wilf. (G.Wilford@ee.surrey.ac.uk).
Fabrizio Polacco (fpolacco@debian.org).
Colin Watson (cjwatson@debian.org).
BUGS
https://gitlab.com/man-db/man-db/-/issues
https://savannah.nongnu.org/bugs/?group=man-db
2.12.0 2023-09-23 WHATIS(1)
NAME
whatis - display one-line manual page descriptions
SYNOPSIS
whatis [-dlv?V] [-r|-w] [-s list] [-m system[,...]] [-M path] [-L locale] [-C file] name ...
DESCRIPTION
Each manual page has a short description available within it. whatis searches the manual page names and displays
the manual page descriptions of any name matched.
name may contain wildcards (-w) or be a regular expression (-r). Using these options, it may be necessary to
quote the name or escape (\) the special characters to stop the shell from interpreting them.
index databases are used during the search, and are updated by the mandb program. Depending on your installa‐
tion, this may be run by a periodic cron job, or may need to be run manually after new manual pages have been in‐
stalled. To produce an old style text whatis database from the relative index database, issue the command:
whatis -M manpath -w '*' | sort > manpath/whatis
where manpath is a manual page hierarchy such as /usr/man.
OPTIONS
-d, --debug
Print debugging information.
-v, --verbose
Print verbose warning messages.
-r, --regex
Interpret each name as a regular expression. If a name matches any part of a page name, a match will be
made. This option causes whatis to be somewhat slower due to the nature of database searches.
-w, --wildcard
Interpret each name as a pattern containing shell style wildcards. For a match to be made, an expanded
name must match the entire page name. This option causes whatis to be somewhat slower due to the nature
of database searches.
-l, --long
Do not trim output to the terminal width. Normally, output will be truncated to the terminal width to
avoid ugly results from poorly-written NAME sections.
-s list, --sections=list, --section=list
Search only the given manual sections. list is a colon- or comma-separated list of sections. If an entry
in list is a simple section, for example "3", then the displayed list of descriptions will include pages
in sections "3", "3perl", "3x", and so on; while if an entry in list has an extension, for example
"3perl", then the list will only include pages in that exact part of the manual section.
-m system[,...], --systems=system[,...]
If this system has access to other operating systems' manual page names, they can be accessed using this
option. To search NewOS's manual page names, use the option -m NewOS.
The 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 man in the argument string.
This option will override the $SYSTEM environment variable.
-M path, --manpath=path
Specify an alternate set of colon-delimited manual page hierarchies to search. By default, whatis uses
the $MANPATH environment variable, unless it is empty or unset, in which case it will determine an appro‐
priate manpath based on your $PATH environment variable. This option overrides the contents of $MANPATH.
-L locale, --locale=locale
whatis will normally determine your current locale by a call to the C function setlocale(3) which interro‐
gates various environment variables, possibly including $LC_MESSAGES and $LANG. To temporarily override
the determined value, use this option to supply a locale string directly to whatis. Note that it will not
take effect until the search for pages actually begins. Output such as the help message will always be
displayed in the initially determined locale.
-C file, --config-file=file
Use this user configuration file rather than the default of ~/.manpath.
-?, --help
Print a help message and exit.
--usage
Print a short usage message and exit.
-V, --version
Display version information.
EXIT STATUS
0 Successful program execution.
1 Usage, syntax or configuration file error.
2 Operational error.
16 Nothing was found that matched the criteria specified.
ENVIRONMENT
SYSTEM If $SYSTEM is set, it will have the same effect as if it had been specified as the argument to the -m op‐
tion.
MANPATH
If $MANPATH is set, its value is interpreted as the colon-delimited manual page hierarchy search path to
use.
See the SEARCH PATH section of manpath(5) for the default behaviour and details of how this environment
variable is handled.
MANWIDTH
If $MANWIDTH is set, its value is used as the terminal width (see the --long option). If it is not set,
the terminal width will be calculated using the value of $COLUMNS, and ioctl(2) if available, or falling
back to 80 characters if all else fails.
FILES
/usr/share/man/index.(bt|db|dir|pag)
A traditional global index database cache.
/var/cache/man/index.(bt|db|dir|pag)
An FHS compliant global index database cache.
/usr/share/man/.../whatis
A traditional whatis text database.
SEE ALSO
apropos(1), man(1), mandb(8)
AUTHOR
Wilf. (G.Wilford@ee.surrey.ac.uk).
Fabrizio Polacco (fpolacco@debian.org).
Colin Watson (cjwatson@debian.org).
BUGS
https://gitlab.com/man-db/man-db/-/issues
https://savannah.nongnu.org/bugs/?group=man-db
2.12.0 2023-09-23 WHATIS(1)