.\" Copyright (c) 2002 John Rochester .\" All rights reserved. .\" .\" Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without .\" modification, are permitted provided that the following conditions .\" are met: .\" 1. Redistributions of source code must retain the above copyright .\" notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer. .\" 2. Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the above copyright .\" notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer in the .\" documentation and/or other materials provided with the distribution. .\" .\" THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED BY THE AUTHOR AND CONTRIBUTORS ``AS IS'' AND .\" ANY EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE .\" IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE .\" ARE DISCLAIMED. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHOR OR CONTRIBUTORS BE LIABLE .\" FOR ANY DIRECT, INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, EXEMPLARY, OR CONSEQUENTIAL .\" DAMAGES (INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, PROCUREMENT OF SUBSTITUTE GOODS .\" OR SERVICES; LOSS OF USE, DATA, OR PROFITS; OR BUSINESS INTERRUPTION) .\" HOWEVER CAUSED AND ON ANY THEORY OF LIABILITY, WHETHER IN CONTRACT, STRICT .\" LIABILITY, OR TORT (INCLUDING NEGLIGENCE OR OTHERWISE) ARISING IN ANY WAY .\" OUT OF THE USE OF THIS SOFTWARE, EVEN IF ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF .\" SUCH DAMAGE. .\" .\" $FreeBSD: src/usr.bin/makewhatis/makewhatis.1,v 1.3 2002/05/18 15:39:56 ru Exp $ .\" .Dd May 12, 2002 .Dt MAKEWHATIS 8 .Os .Sh NAME .Nm makewhatis .Nd "create whatis database" .Sh SYNOPSIS .Nm .Op Fl a .Op Fl i Ar column .Op Fl n Ar name .Op Fl o Ar file .Op Fl v .Op Fl L .Op Ar directories ... .Sh DESCRIPTION The .Nm utility collects the names and short descriptions from all the unformatted man pages in the .Ar directories and puts them into a file used by the .Xr whatis 1 and .Xr apropos 1 commands. Directories may be separated by colons instead of spaces. If no .Ar directories are specified, the contents of the .Ev MANPATH environment variable will be used, or if that is not set, the default directory .Pa /usr/share/man will be processed. .Pp The options are as follows: .Bl -tag -width ".Fl i Ar column" .It Fl a Appends to the output file(s) instead of replacing them. The output will be sorted with duplicate lines removed, but may have obsolete entries. .It Fl i Ar column Indents the description by .Ar column characters. The default value is 24. .It Fl n Ar name Uses .Ar name instead of .Pa whatis . .It Fl o Ar file Outputs all lines to the .Ar file instead of .Pa */man/whatis . .It Fl v Makes .Nm more verbose about what it is doing. .It Fl L Process only localized subdirectories corresponding to the locale specified in the standard environment variables. .El .Sh ENVIRONMENT .Bl -tag -width ".Ev MANPATH" .It Ev LC_ALL , LC_CTYPE , LANG These variables control what subdirectories will be processed if the .Fl L option is used. .It Ev MACHINE If set, its value is used to override the current machine type when searching machine specific subdirectories. .It Ev MANPATH Determines the set of directories to be processed if none are given on the command line. .El .Sh FILES .Bl -tag -width ".Pa /usr/share/man" -compact .It Pa /usr/share/man Default directory to process if the .Ev MANPATH environment variable is not set. .It Pa */man/whatis The default output file. .El .Sh DIAGNOSTICS .Ex -std .Sh SEE ALSO .Xr apropos 1 , .Xr whatis 1 .Sh HISTORY The .Nm command appeared in .Fx 2.1 . .Sh AUTHORS .An -nosplit The .Nm program was originally written in Perl and was contributed by .An Wolfram Schneider . The current version of .Nm was rewritten in C by .An John Rochester .