makewhatis

MAKEWHATIS(8)                                                    MAKEWHATIS(8)



NAME
       makewhatis - Create the whatis database

SYNOPSIS
       makewhatis [-u] [-v] [-w] [-s sections ] [-c [catpath]] [manpath]

DESCRIPTION
       makewhatis  reads  all the manual pages contained in the given sections
       of manpath or the preformatted pages contained in the given sections of
       catpath.   For each page, it writes a line in the whatis database; each
       line consists of the name of the page and a  short  description,  sepa-
       rated  by a dash. The description is extracted using the content of the
       NAME section of the manual page.

       Since other languages use a different term for the NAME section,  make-
       whatis  recognizes  the  equivalent  terms  in Czech, Italian, Finnish,
       French, German and Spanish.

       If no manpath argument is given, /usr/man is assumed by default.

OPTIONS
       -u     Update database with new pages.

       -v     Verbose output

       -w     Use manpath obtained from `man --path`

       -s sections
              Looks in the sections of manpath or catpath.  If the  option  is
              absent, its value is assumed to be '1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 n l'

       -c catpath
              The preformatted manual pages located in catpath are scanned. If
              the argument is not provided, it is  assumed  to  be  the  first
              existing directory between /usr/man/preformat and /usr/man.

EXAMPLES
       To rebuild only /usr/X11R6/man/whatis and /usr/local/man/whatis

              makewhatis /usr/X11R6/man /usr/local/man

       To  rebuild  all  the databases, including those of the Finnish, French
       and Italian translations

              LANGUAGE=fi:fr:it makewhatis -w

BUGS
       makewhatis may not handle too well manual pages written with  non-stan-
       dard troff macros, such as the Tcl/Tk pages.

       makewhatis does not work on preformatted translations.

SEE ALSO
       apropos(1), man(1), whatis(1)



                                22 January 1999                  MAKEWHATIS(8)