NAME

whatis − display a one-line summary about a keyword

SYNOPSIS

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(1) command. 

FILES

/usr/share/man/whatis
data base

SEE ALSO

man(1), catman(8)

Sun Release 4.0  —  Last change: 9 September 1987