whatis(1) — Commands
NAME
whatis − Describes a command’s function
SYNOPSIS
whatis [−M pathname] keyword...
The whatis command looks up a keyword, which may be a command, system call, library function, or special filename and displays the NAME line from the reference page. You can then issue the man command to display additional information.
OPTIONS
−M pathname
Specifies an alternative search path. The search path is a list of directories, separated by : (colons), in which whatis expects to find the standard manual subdirectories. (For more information, see the man command.)
DESCRIPTION
The whatis command is equivalent to the man command with the −f option.
EXAMPLES
To find out what function the ls command performs, enter:
whatis ls
FILES
/usr/share/man/whatis
Keyword database.
/usr/lbin/mkwhatis
Creates the whatis keyword database.
/usr/lbin/getNAME
Used by mkwhatis to extract keywords from the manuals.