NAME

whatis − display a one-line summary about a keyword

SYNOPSIS

/usr/ucb/whatis command . . . 

DESCRIPTION

whatis looks up a given command and displays the header line from the manual section.  You can then run the man(1) command to get more information.  If the line starts ‘name(section) ...’ you can do ‘man section  name’ to get the documentation for it.  Try ‘whatis ed’ and then you should do ‘man 1 ed’ to get the manual page for ed(1). 

whatis is actually just the −f option to the man command. 

FILES

/usr/share/man/whatis data base

SEE ALSO

man(1), catman(1M)

  —  BSD Compatibility Package