263 lines
6.4 KiB
Text
263 lines
6.4 KiB
Text
.\" Man page for whatis
|
|
.\"
|
|
.\" Copyright (C), 1994, 1995, Graeme W. Wilford. (Wilf.)
|
|
.\"
|
|
.\" You may distribute under the terms of the GNU General Public
|
|
.\" License as specified in the file docs/COPYING.GPLv2 that comes with the
|
|
.\" man-db distribution.
|
|
.\"
|
|
.\" Sat Oct 29 13:09:31 GMT 1994 Wilf. (G.Wilford@ee.surrey.ac.uk)
|
|
.\"
|
|
.pc
|
|
.TH %thwhatis% 1 "%date%" "%version%" "Manual pager utils"
|
|
.SH NAME
|
|
%whatis% \- display one-line manual page descriptions
|
|
.SH SYNOPSIS
|
|
.B %whatis%
|
|
.RB [\| \-dlv?V \|]
|
|
.RB [\| \-r \||\| \-w\c
|
|
\|]
|
|
.RB [\| \-s
|
|
.IR list \|]
|
|
.RB [\| \-m
|
|
.IR system \|[\|,.\|.\|.\|]\|]
|
|
.RB [\| \-M
|
|
.IR path \|]
|
|
.RB [\| \-L
|
|
.IR locale \|]
|
|
.RB [\| \-C
|
|
.IR file \|]
|
|
.I name
|
|
\&.\|.\|.
|
|
.SH DESCRIPTION
|
|
Each manual page has a short description available within it.
|
|
.B %whatis%
|
|
searches the manual page names and displays the manual page descriptions
|
|
of any
|
|
.I name
|
|
matched.
|
|
|
|
.I name
|
|
may contain wildcards
|
|
.RB ( \-w )
|
|
or be a regular expression
|
|
.RB ( \-r ).
|
|
Using these options, it may be necessary to quote the
|
|
.I name
|
|
or escape (\\) the special characters to stop the shell from interpreting
|
|
them.
|
|
|
|
.B index
|
|
databases are used during the search, and are updated by the
|
|
.B %mandb%
|
|
program.
|
|
Depending on your installation, this may be run by a periodic cron job, or
|
|
may need to be run manually after new manual pages have been installed.
|
|
To produce an old style text
|
|
.B whatis
|
|
database from the relative
|
|
.B index
|
|
database, issue the command:
|
|
|
|
.B %whatis% \-M
|
|
.I manpath
|
|
.B \-w '*' | sort >
|
|
.I manpath/whatis
|
|
|
|
where
|
|
.I manpath
|
|
is a manual page hierarchy such as
|
|
.IR /usr/man .
|
|
.SH OPTIONS
|
|
.TP
|
|
.if !'po4a'hide' .BR \-d ", " \-\-debug
|
|
Print debugging information.
|
|
.TP
|
|
.if !'po4a'hide' .BR \-v ", " \-\-verbose
|
|
Print verbose warning messages.
|
|
.TP
|
|
.if !'po4a'hide' .BR \-r ", " \-\-regex
|
|
Interpret each
|
|
.I name
|
|
as a regular expression.
|
|
If a
|
|
.I name
|
|
matches any part of a page name, a match will be made.
|
|
This option causes
|
|
.B %whatis%
|
|
to be somewhat slower due to the nature of database searches.
|
|
.TP
|
|
.if !'po4a'hide' .BR \-w ", " \-\-wildcard
|
|
Interpret each
|
|
.I name
|
|
as a pattern containing shell style wildcards.
|
|
For a match to be made, an expanded
|
|
.I name
|
|
must match the entire page name.
|
|
This option causes
|
|
.B %whatis%
|
|
to be somewhat slower due to the nature of database searches.
|
|
.TP
|
|
.if !'po4a'hide' .BR \-l ", " \-\-long
|
|
Do not trim output to the terminal width.
|
|
Normally, output will be truncated to the terminal width to avoid ugly
|
|
results from poorly-written
|
|
.B NAME
|
|
sections.
|
|
.TP
|
|
\fB\-s\fR \fIlist\/\fR, \
|
|
\fB\-\-sections=\fIlist\/\fR, \
|
|
\fB\-\-section=\fIlist\fR
|
|
Search only the given manual sections.
|
|
.I list
|
|
is a colon- or comma-separated list of sections.
|
|
If an entry in
|
|
.I list
|
|
is a simple section, for example "3", then the displayed list of
|
|
descriptions will include pages in sections "3", "3perl", "3x", and so on;
|
|
while if an entry in
|
|
.I list
|
|
has an extension, for example "3perl", then the list will only include
|
|
pages in that exact part of the manual section.
|
|
.TP
|
|
\fB\-m\fR \fIsystem\fR\|[\|,.\|.\|.\|]\|, \
|
|
\fB\-\-systems=\fIsystem\fR\|[\|,.\|.\|.\|]
|
|
If this system has access to other operating systems' manual page names,
|
|
they can be accessed using this option.
|
|
To search NewOS's manual page names,
|
|
use the option
|
|
.B \-m
|
|
.BR NewOS .
|
|
|
|
The
|
|
.I system
|
|
specified can be a combination of comma delimited operating system names.
|
|
To include a search of the native operating system's
|
|
manual page names, include the system name
|
|
.B man
|
|
in the argument string.
|
|
This option will override the
|
|
.RB $ SYSTEM
|
|
environment variable.
|
|
.TP
|
|
.BI \-M\ path \fR,\ \fB\-\-manpath= path
|
|
Specify an alternate set of colon-delimited manual page hierarchies to
|
|
search.
|
|
By default,
|
|
.B %program%
|
|
uses the
|
|
.RB $ MANPATH
|
|
environment variable, unless it is empty or unset, in which case it will
|
|
determine an appropriate manpath based on your
|
|
.RB $ PATH
|
|
environment variable.
|
|
This option overrides the contents of
|
|
.RB $ MANPATH .
|
|
.TP
|
|
.BI \-L\ locale \fR,\ \fB\-\-locale= locale
|
|
.B %program%
|
|
will normally determine your current locale by a call to the C function
|
|
.BR setlocale (3)
|
|
which interrogates various environment variables, possibly including
|
|
.RB $ LC_MESSAGES
|
|
and
|
|
.RB $ LANG .
|
|
To temporarily override the determined value, use this option to supply a
|
|
.I locale
|
|
string directly to
|
|
.BR %program% .
|
|
Note that it will not take effect until the search for pages actually
|
|
begins.
|
|
Output such as the help message will always be displayed in the initially
|
|
determined locale.
|
|
.TP
|
|
.BI \-C\ file \fR,\ \fB\-\-config\-file= file
|
|
Use this user configuration file rather than the default of
|
|
.IR \(ti/.manpath .
|
|
.TP
|
|
.if !'po4a'hide' .BR \-? ", " \-\-help
|
|
Print a help message and exit.
|
|
.TP
|
|
.if !'po4a'hide' .B \-\-usage
|
|
Print a short usage message and exit.
|
|
.TP
|
|
.if !'po4a'hide' .BR \-V ", " \-\-version
|
|
Display version information.
|
|
.SH "EXIT STATUS"
|
|
.TP
|
|
.if !'po4a'hide' .B 0
|
|
Successful program execution.
|
|
.TP
|
|
.if !'po4a'hide' .B 1
|
|
Usage, syntax or configuration file error.
|
|
.TP
|
|
.if !'po4a'hide' .B 2
|
|
Operational error.
|
|
.TP
|
|
.if !'po4a'hide' .B 16
|
|
Nothing was found that matched the criteria specified.
|
|
.SH ENVIRONMENT
|
|
.TP
|
|
.if !'po4a'hide' .B SYSTEM
|
|
If
|
|
.RB $ SYSTEM
|
|
is set, it will have the same effect as if it had been specified as the
|
|
argument to the
|
|
.B \-m
|
|
option.
|
|
.TP
|
|
.if !'po4a'hide' .B MANPATH
|
|
If
|
|
.RB $ MANPATH
|
|
is set, its value is interpreted as the colon-delimited manual page
|
|
hierarchy search path to use.
|
|
|
|
See the
|
|
.B SEARCH PATH
|
|
section of
|
|
.BR manpath (5)
|
|
for the default behaviour and details of how this environment variable is
|
|
handled.
|
|
.TP
|
|
.if !'po4a'hide' .B MANWIDTH
|
|
If
|
|
.RB $ MANWIDTH
|
|
is set, its value is used as the terminal width (see the
|
|
.B \-\-long
|
|
option).
|
|
If it is not set, the terminal width will be calculated using the value of
|
|
.RB $ COLUMNS ,
|
|
and
|
|
.BR ioctl (2)
|
|
if available, or falling back to 80 characters if all else fails.
|
|
.SH FILES
|
|
.TP
|
|
.if !'po4a'hide' .I /usr/share/man/index.(bt|db|dir|pag)
|
|
A traditional global
|
|
.I index
|
|
database cache.
|
|
.TP
|
|
.if !'po4a'hide' .I /var/cache/man/index.(bt|db|dir|pag)
|
|
An FHS
|
|
compliant global
|
|
.I index
|
|
database cache.
|
|
.TP
|
|
.if !'po4a'hide' .I /usr/share/man/\|.\|.\|.\|/whatis
|
|
A traditional
|
|
.B whatis
|
|
text database.
|
|
.SH "SEE ALSO"
|
|
.if !'po4a'hide' .BR %apropos% (1),
|
|
.if !'po4a'hide' .BR %man% (1),
|
|
.if !'po4a'hide' .BR %mandb% (8)
|
|
.SH AUTHOR
|
|
.nf
|
|
.if !'po4a'hide' Wilf.\& (G.Wilford@ee.surrey.ac.uk).
|
|
.if !'po4a'hide' Fabrizio Polacco (fpolacco@debian.org).
|
|
.if !'po4a'hide' Colin Watson (cjwatson@debian.org).
|
|
.fi
|
|
.SH BUGS
|
|
.if !'po4a'hide' https://gitlab.com/man-db/man-db/\-/issues
|
|
.br
|
|
.if !'po4a'hide' https://savannah.nongnu.org/bugs/?group=man\-db
|