MAKEINDEX(8) — Stardent Computer Inc.

NAME

makeindex − index manpages allowing man very_long_name to work

SYNOPSIS

/usr/lib/makeindex file ...

DESCRIPTION

makeindex builds a data base of man page file names and man page names. The man command uses the data base to find the file name for a particular man page.

For every file in the argument list, makeindex writes one or more lines on stdout containing the file name, and a list of manpage names. Man page Index files are created by:

for i in 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8
    cd /usr/man/man$i
    /usr/lib/makeindex ∗ > ../cat$i/Index
done
for i in 1 2 3
    cd /usr/man/bsd/man$i
    /usr/lib/makeindex ∗ > ../cat$i/Index
done

FILE FORMAT

To allow makeindex to locate the name, the source file format of a man-page MUST be consistent with the following description.

The FIRST occurence of a line that begins with .SH must be the line that defines the NAME of a function, that is:

.SH NAME

The lines that follow the name will all be scanned to locate possible entries for the index file. The format of these lines can be any one of the following:

        function \- oneline description
        function1, function2, function_N \- oneline description
        string: strcat, strcmp, strncmp \- string functions

The next line that begins with the characters .SH stops the scanning for possible index entries, thus allowing multiple lines having the same format to create multiple entries. An index entry, listing the file name and the function name will be created for each of the names listed above. If the manpage named ’samplepage’ contained exactly the entries shown in the example above, then an ’Index’ file would contain the following entries:

        samplepage:function
        samplepage:function1
        samplepage:function2
        samplepage:function_N
        samplepage:strcat
        samplepage:strcmp
        samplepage:string
        samplepage:strncmp

In other words, names may be either colon delimited or comma delimited in a one-line description that contains a ’\-’ preceding the actual description of the functions. Everything must be in that single-line description to allow indexing to function correctly.

WHAT TO AVOID

The following layout will not function correctly:

    .SH NAME
    function1, function2, function3       <newline character>
    \- description on this following line.
    .SH SYNOPSIS

No entries will be created with the above layout.

    .SH NAME
    function1, function2, function3       <newline character>
    function4, function5 \- description of these functions
    .SH SYNOPSIS

This will result in only function4 and function5 being indexed because there is no backslash-hyphen used.

WHAT IS PERMITTED

The following layout is permitted:

    .SH NAME
    generalname_if_any: func1, func2, func3, func4, func5 \-
      description on this next line
    .SH SYNOPSIS

In other words, the elements that cause an entry to be created for a line are the function names (comma or colon delimited), and the backslash-hyphen. Any lines not containing these elements will be ignored.

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