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@(#)whatis.1 6.6 (Berkeley) 05/27/90

C 4 whatis - describe what a command is

whatis [-M path] [-m path] command ...

Whatis looks up a given command and gives the header line from the manual page. You can then use the man (1) command to get more information.

The options are as follows:

M Override the list of standard directories where whatis searches for its database named ``whatis.db''. The supplied path must be a colon (``:'') separated list of directories. This search path may also be set using the environmental variable MANPATH .

m Augment the list of standard directories where whatis searches for its database named ``whatis.db''. The supplied path must be a colon (``:'') separated list of directories. These directories will be searched before the standard directories or the directories supplied with the M option or the MANPATH environmental variable are searched.

MANPATH The standard search path used by man may be overridden by specifying a path in the MANPATH environmental variable. The format of the path is a colon (``:'') separated list of directories.

whatis.db name of the whatis database apropos(1), man(1), whereis(1)