WHATIS(1)
NAME
whatis − describe what a command is
USAGE
whatis command ...
DESCRIPTION
Whatis looks up a given command and gives the header line from the manual section. This header line should contain the section number and command name, along with a very brief one-line description.
You can then execute the man (1) command to get full details about the particular command.
Actually, whatis produces the same results as the −f option to the man (1) command.
EXAMPLE
The output of typing whatis ed is
ed(1) - text editor
FILES
/usr/lib/whatisdatabase