WHATIS(1) — USER COMMANDS
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.
whatis uses the whatis database. This database can be created using the −w option of catman(8).
FILES
/usr/[share]/man/whatis
data base
SEE ALSO
NOTES
whatis uses the /usr/man/whatis database, which is created by catman(8).
Sun Release 4.1 — Last change: 9 September 1987