xref: /NextBSD/usr.bin/makewhatis/makewhatis.1 (revision 65fff60055f3eb6d939509eeb9481325c7f2b8a0)
1.\" Copyright (c) 2002 John Rochester
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3.\"
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5.\" modification, are permitted provided that the following conditions
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25.\" $FreeBSD$
26.\"
27.Dd December 3, 2005
28.Dt MAKEWHATIS 1
29.Os
30.Sh NAME
31.Nm makewhatis
32.Nd "create whatis database"
33.Sh SYNOPSIS
34.Nm
35.Op Fl a
36.Op Fl i Ar column
37.Op Fl n Ar name
38.Op Fl o Ar file
39.Op Fl v
40.Op Fl L
41.Op Ar directories ...
42.Sh DESCRIPTION
43The
44.Nm
45utility collects the names and short descriptions from all the unformatted
46man pages in the
47.Ar directories
48and puts them into a file used by the
49.Xr whatis 1
50and
51.Xr apropos 1
52commands.
53Directories may be separated by colons instead of spaces.
54If no
55.Ar directories
56are specified, the contents of the
57.Ev MANPATH
58environment variable will be used, or if that is not set, the default directory
59.Pa /usr/share/man
60will be processed.
61.Pp
62The options are as follows:
63.Bl -tag -width ".Fl i Ar column"
64.It Fl a
65Appends to the output file(s) instead of replacing them.
66The output
67will be sorted with duplicate lines removed, but may have obsolete
68entries.
69.It Fl i Ar column
70Indents the description by
71.Ar column
72characters.
73The default value is 24.
74.It Fl n Ar name
75Uses
76.Ar name
77instead of
78.Pa whatis .
79.It Fl o Ar file
80Outputs all lines to the
81.Ar file
82instead of
83.Pa */man/whatis .
84.It Fl v
85Makes
86.Nm
87more verbose about what it is doing.
88.It Fl L
89Process only localized subdirectories corresponding to the locale specified
90in the standard environment variables.
91.El
92.Sh ENVIRONMENT
93.Bl -tag -width ".Ev MANPATH"
94.It Ev LC_ALL , LC_CTYPE , LANG
95These variables control what subdirectories will be processed if the
96.Fl L
97option is used.
98.It Ev MACHINE
99If set, its value is used to override the current
100machine type when searching machine specific subdirectories.
101.It Ev MACHINE_ARCH
102If set, its value is used to override the current
103architecture when searching architecture specific subdirectories.
104.It Ev MANPATH
105Determines the set of directories to be processed if none are given on
106the command line.
107.El
108.Sh FILES
109.Bl -tag -width ".Pa /usr/share/man" -compact
110.It Pa /usr/share/man
111Default directory to process if the
112.Ev MANPATH
113environment variable is not set.
114.It Pa */man/whatis
115The default output file.
116.El
117.Sh EXIT STATUS
118.Ex -std
119.Sh SEE ALSO
120.Xr apropos 1 ,
121.Xr whatis 1
122.Sh HISTORY
123The
124.Nm
125command appeared in
126.Fx 2.1 .
127.Sh AUTHORS
128.An -nosplit
129The
130.Nm
131program was originally written in Perl and was contributed by
132.An Wolfram Schneider .
133The current version of
134.Nm
135was rewritten in C by
136.An John Rochester .
137