58 lines
1.5 KiB
Groff
58 lines
1.5 KiB
Groff
.TH WHATIS 5
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.SH NAME
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whatis \- database of online manual pages
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.SH SYNOPSIS
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.B /usr/man/*/whatis
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.br
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.B /usr/man/whatis
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.SH DESCRIPTION
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The
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.B whatis
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file in each manual page directory is a database of titles for manual pages.
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This database is used by
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.BR man (1)
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to map titles to manual pages names. The database is created by
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.BR makewhatis (1)
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from the NAME sections of the manual pages.
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.PP
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The NAME secions must be simple lines with no troff fluff but one
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backslash like these two:
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.PP
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.RS
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whatis \e\- database of online manual pages
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.br
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cawf, nroff \e\- C version of the nroff-like, Amazingly Workable (text)
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Formatter
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.RE
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.PP
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These lines are transformed by
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.B makewhatis
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to these two lines for the database:
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.PP
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.RS
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cawf, nroff (1) \- C version of the nroff-like, Amazingly Workable (text)
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Formatter
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.br
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whatis (5) \- database of online manual pages
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.RE
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.PP
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As you can see they are in section number order, so that
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.B man
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searches them in section order.
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.PP
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Each entry is just a single line, restricting the NAME section to a single
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line too with just one dash, and commas and spaces before the dash as you
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see above.
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.SH "SEE ALSO"
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.BR man (1),
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.BR whatis (1),
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.BR makewhatis (1),
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.BR man (7).
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.SH BUGS
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It seems to be impossible for many manual page writers to keep the NAME
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section simple. They also like to use every font available in their
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documents. My simple scripts can't read their NAME sections, my simple
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me can't read their texts.
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.SH AUTHOR
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Kees J. Bot (kjb@cs.vu.nl)
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