whatis(5)

NAME

     whatis - database of online manual pages

SYNOPSIS

     /usr/man/*/whatis
     /usr/man/whatis

DESCRIPTION

     The whatis file in each manual page directory is a database of titles for
     manual  pages.   This  database is used by man(1) to map titles to manual
     pages names.  The database is created  by  makewhatis(1)  from  the  NAME
     sections of the manual pages.

     The NAME secions must be  simple  lines  with  no  troff  fluff  but  one
     backslash like these two:

          whatis \- database of online manual pages
          cawf, nroff \- C  version  of  the  nroff-like,  Amazingly  Workable
          (text) Formatter

     These lines are transformed by makewhatis to  these  two  lines  for  the
     database:

          cawf, nroff (1) - C version of the  nroff-like,  Amazingly  Workable
          (text) Formatter
          whatis (5) - database of online manual pages

     As you can see they are in section number order,  so  that  man  searches
     them in section order.

     Each entry is just a single line,  restricting  the  NAME  section  to  a
     single line too with just one dash, and commas and spaces before the dash
     as you see above.

SEE ALSO

     man(1), whatis(1), makewhatis(1), man(7).

BUGS

     It seems to be impossible for many manual page writers to keep  the  NAME
     section  simple.   They  also  like  to use every font available in their
     documents.  My simple scripts can't read their NAME sections,  my  simple
     me can't read their texts.

AUTHOR

     Kees J. Bot (kjb@cs.vu.nl)