.TH WHATIS 5
.SH NAME
whatis \- database of online manual pages
.SH SYNOPSIS
.B /usr/man/*/whatis
.br
.B /usr/man/whatis
.SH DESCRIPTION
The
.B whatis
file in each manual page directory is a database of titles for manual pages.
This database is used by
.BR man (1)
to map titles to manual pages names.  The database is created by
.BR makewhatis (1)
from the NAME sections of the manual pages.
.PP
The NAME secions must be simple lines with no troff fluff but one
backslash like these two:
.PP
.RS
whatis \e\- database of online manual pages
.br
cawf, nroff \e\- C version of the nroff-like, Amazingly Workable (text)
Formatter
.RE
.PP
These lines are transformed by
.B makewhatis
to these two lines for the database:
.PP
.RS
cawf, nroff (1) \- C version of the nroff-like, Amazingly Workable (text)
Formatter
.br
whatis (5) \- database of online manual pages
.RE
.PP
As you can see they are in section number order, so that
.B man
searches them in section order.
.PP
Each entry is just a single line, restricting the NAME section to a single
line too with just one dash, and commas and spaces before the dash as you
see above.
.SH "SEE ALSO"
.BR man (1),
.BR whatis (1),
.BR makewhatis (1),
.BR man (7).
.SH BUGS
It seems to be impossible for many manual page writers to keep the NAME
section simple.  They also like to use every font available in their
documents.  My simple scripts can't read their NAME sections, my simple
me can't read their texts.
.SH AUTHOR
Kees J. Bot (kjb@cs.vu.nl)