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+.\" 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 COPYING 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 system's 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 ~/.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.
+.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://savannah.nongnu.org/bugs/?group=man-db