WHATIS(1) BSD Reference Manual WHATIS(1)NAME
whatis - describe what a command is
SYNOPSIS
whatis [-M path] [-m path] command ...
DESCRIPTION
Whatis looks up a given command and gives the header line from the manual
page. You can then use the man(1) command to get more information.
The options are as follows:
-M path Override the list of standard directories whatis searches for
its database named ``whatis.db''. The supplied path must be a
colon ``:'' separated list of directories. This search path
may also be set using the environment variable MANPATH.
-m path Augment the list of standard directories whatis searches for
its database named ``whatis.db''. The supplied path must be a
colon ``:'' separated list of directories. These directories
will be searched before the standard directories or the di-
rectories supplied with the -M option or the MANPATH environ-
ment variable are searched.
ENVIRONMENT
MANPATH The standard search path used by man(1) may be overridden by
specifying a path in the MANPATH environment variable.
FILES
whatis.db name of the whatis database
SEE ALSOapropos(1), makewhatis(1), man(1), whereis(1)HISTORY
The whatis command appeared in 3.0BSD.
4th Berkeley Distribution June 6, 1993 1