

MAKEWHATIS(1)             Minix Programmer's Manual              MAKEWHATIS(1)


NAME
     makewhatis - build the whatis(5) database

SYNOPSIS
     makewhatis directory

DESCRIPTION
     Makewhatis  makes  the  whatis(5)  database  in  the  given  manual  page
     directory.   This database is used by man(1) to map titles to manual page
     names and by whatis(1) to give one line descriptions.  See whatis(5)  for
     a  desciption  of  what  a  whatis  database  should  look  like  and the
     restrictions that are placed on the NAME sections so that makewhatis  can
     make whatis lines out of the manual pages.

     Makewhatis not only scans all the man?/page.? files,  but  also  takes  a
     look  into  the  cat? directories for manual pages without an unformatted
     counterpart, because there are still a  few  manual  pages  around  that,
     horror of horrors, are written as flat text.

SEE ALSO
     whatis(5).

BUGS
     Those human made cat pages are written in so  many  formats  that  it  is
     amazing that a whatis line can be pulled out of them.

     Removing only font and size changes from the NAME section  is  often  not
     enough.

AUTHOR
     Kees J. Bot (kjb@cs.vu.nl)



























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