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@(#)whatis.1 6.3 (Berkeley) 05/07/86

C 4 whatis - describe what a command is whatis command ... Whatis looks up a given command and gives the header line from the manual section. You can then run the man (1) command to get more information. If the line starts `name(section) ...' you can do `man section name' to get the documentation for it. Try `whatis ed' and then you should do `man 1 ed' to get the manual.

Whatis is actually just the -f option to the man (1) command.

/usr/man/whatis Data base man(1), catman(8)