.\" $NetBSD: whatis.1,v 1.5 2022/09/11 20:32:37 gutteridge Exp $
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.\" Copyright (c) 2012 Joerg Sonnenberger <joerg@NetBSD.org>
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.Dd June 16, 2016
.Dt WHATIS 1
.Os
.Sh NAME
.Nm whatis
.Nd describe what a command is
.Sh SYNOPSIS
.Nm
.Op Fl C Ar path
.Ar command Ar ...
.Sh DESCRIPTION
The
.Nm
program queries the apropos database built by
.Xr makemandb 8 .
It searches for manual pages with name
.Ar command
and outputs name of the matching manual pages along with the section and the
brief description from the NAME section.
.Pp
It supports the following options:
.Bl -tag -width indent
.It Fl C Ar path
Use different
.Xr man 1
configuration file than the default,
.Pa /etc/man.conf .
.El
.Sh FILES
.Bl -hang -width /etc/man.conf -compact
.It Pa /etc/man.conf
The location of the SQLite FTS database can be configured using the
.Cd _mandb
tag.
.El
.Sh SEE ALSO
.Xr apropos 1 ,
.Xr man 1 ,
.Xr man.conf 5 ,
.Xr makemandb 8
.Sh HISTORY
The
.Nm
command appeared in 3.0BSD.
It was rewritten in
.Nx 6.0
to use the SQLite index created by
.Xr makemandb 8 .