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)