makewhatis

MAKEWHATIS(8)							MAKEWHATIS(8)



NAME
       makewhatis - Create the whatis database

SYNOPSIS
       makewhatis [-u] [-v] [-w] [-s sections ] [-c [catpath]] [-o whatisdb ]
       [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,
       separated 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.

       -o whatisdb
	      Location of the whatis database.	If the option is  absent,  it
	      is assumed to be /var/cache/man/whatis.

EXAMPLES
       To  rebuild  the	 database  for	only  those  pages  contained  in the
       /usr/X11R6/man and /usr/local/share/man file hierarchies

	      makewhatis /usr/X11R6/man /usr/local/share/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)