NAME

whatis − describe what a command is

SYNOPSIS

whatis [ −a ] command ... 

DESCRIPTION

Whatis looks up a given command and gives 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.

Normally, whatis checks database files ‘whatis’.  The directory containing ‘whatis’ database is indicated by a environment variable LANG (e.g. /usr/man/ja_JP.SJIS).  And then whatis checks standard locations for manual information (/usr/man/C).  If /usr/man/C does not exist, /usr/man is checked.  If LANG is ‘ja_JP.SJIS’ or ‘ja_JP.EUC’, whatis checks another KANJI code ‘whatis’ database in case of not existing the directory indicated by LANG.  And in this case, whatis converts from Shift JIS code to Japanese EUC code, or does the opposite conversion.  −a forces whatis to check only ‘/usr/man/C/whatis’. 

Whatis is actually just the −f option to the man(1) command.

FILES

/usr/man/∗/whatisData base

SEE ALSO

man(1), catman(8), setlocale(3)

NEWS-OSRelease 4.1C