| 1 | .TH WHATIS 5
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| 2 | .SH NAME
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| 3 | whatis \- database of online manual pages
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| 4 | .SH SYNOPSIS
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| 5 | .B /usr/man/*/whatis
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| 6 | .br
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| 7 | .B /usr/man/whatis
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| 8 | .SH DESCRIPTION
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| 9 | The
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| 10 | .B whatis
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| 11 | file in each manual page directory is a database of titles for manual pages.
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| 12 | This database is used by
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| 13 | .BR man (1)
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| 14 | to map titles to manual pages names. The database is created by
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| 15 | .BR makewhatis (1)
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| 16 | from the NAME sections of the manual pages.
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| 17 | .PP
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| 18 | The NAME secions must be simple lines with no troff fluff but one
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| 19 | backslash like these two:
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| 20 | .PP
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| 21 | .RS
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| 22 | whatis \e\- database of online manual pages
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| 23 | .br
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| 24 | cawf, nroff \e\- C version of the nroff-like, Amazingly Workable (text)
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| 25 | Formatter
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| 26 | .RE
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| 27 | .PP
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| 28 | These lines are transformed by
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| 29 | .B makewhatis
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| 30 | to these two lines for the database:
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| 31 | .PP
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| 32 | .RS
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| 33 | cawf, nroff (1) \- C version of the nroff-like, Amazingly Workable (text)
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| 34 | Formatter
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| 35 | .br
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| 36 | whatis (5) \- database of online manual pages
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| 37 | .RE
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| 38 | .PP
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| 39 | As you can see they are in section number order, so that
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| 40 | .B man
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| 41 | searches them in section order.
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| 42 | .PP
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| 43 | Each entry is just a single line, restricting the NAME section to a single
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| 44 | line too with just one dash, and commas and spaces before the dash as you
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| 45 | see above.
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| 46 | .SH "SEE ALSO"
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| 47 | .BR man (1),
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| 48 | .BR whatis (1),
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| 49 | .BR makewhatis (1),
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| 50 | .BR man (7).
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| 51 | .SH BUGS
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| 52 | It seems to be impossible for many manual page writers to keep the NAME
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| 53 | section simple. They also like to use every font available in their
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| 54 | documents. My simple scripts can't read their NAME sections, my simple
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| 55 | me can't read their texts.
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| 56 | .SH AUTHOR
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| 57 | Kees J. Bot (kjb@cs.vu.nl)
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