MAKEWHATIS(8)           OpenBSD System Manager's Manual          MAKEWHATIS(8)

NAME
     makewhatis - create a whatis.db database

SYNOPSIS
     makewhatis [-p] [manpath ...]
     makewhatis [-p] -d manpath files ...
     makewhatis [-p] -t files

DESCRIPTION
     makewhatis strips the NAME lines from compiled or raw man(1) pages and
     creates a whatis.db database (that is, a subject index) for use in apro-
     pos(1) or with man(1)'s -k option.  If manpath is unspecified, makewhatis
     by default creates databases for each directory prefixed by the _whatdb
     keyword in /etc/man.conf. Man pages compressed with compress(1) and
     gzip(1) are uncompressed before processing.

     If the -d option is used, makewhatis merges the description of files with
     an existing whatis.db database in manpath.

     If the -p option is used, makewhatis is less forgiving and warns about
     incorrect man pages.

     The -t option can be used to check a set of potential man pages without
     changing any whatis.db database.

FILES
     whatis.db      index to man pages in directory,
     /etc/man.conf  man configuration information.

BUGS
     makewhatis should parse /etc/man.conf and deal with extra configuration
     information.  In particular, it does not handle nroff(1) me format.
     Likewise, its use of heuristics to retrieve subjects from most man pages
     is not 100% accurate.

SEE ALSO
     nroff(1), man(1), man.conf(5).

OpenBSD 3.0                    October 17, 1997                              1
