freebsd-dev/usr.bin/makewhatis/makewhatis.1

.\" Copyright (c) 2002 John Rochester
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.Dd May 12, 2002
.Dt MAKEWHATIS 1
.Os
.Sh NAME
.Nm makewhatis
.Nd "create whatis database"
.Sh SYNOPSIS
.Nm
.Op Fl a
.Op Fl i Ar column
.Op Fl n Ar name
.Op Fl o Ar file
.Op Fl v
.Op Fl L
.Op Ar directories ...
.Sh DESCRIPTION
The
.Nm
utility collects the names and short descriptions from all the unformatted
man pages in the
.Ar directories
and puts them into a file used by the
.Xr whatis 1
and
.Xr apropos 1
commands.
Directories may be separated by colons instead of spaces.
If no
.Ar directories
are specified, the contents of the
.Ev MANPATH
environment variable will be used, or if that is not set, the default directory
.Pa /usr/share/man
will be processed.
.Pp
The options are as follows:
.Bl -tag -width ".Fl i Ar column"
.It Fl a
Appends to the output file(s) instead of replacing them.
The output
will be sorted with duplicate lines removed, but may have obsolete
entries.
.It Fl i Ar column
Indents the description by
.Ar column
characters.
The default value is 24.
.It Fl n Ar name
Uses
.Ar name
instead of
.Pa whatis .
.It Fl o Ar file
Outputs all lines to the
.Ar file
instead of
.Pa */man/whatis .
.It Fl v
Makes
.Nm
more verbose about what it is doing.
.It Fl L
Process only localized subdirectories corresponding to the locale specified
in the standard environment variables.
.El
.Sh ENVIRONMENT
.Bl -tag -width ".Ev MANPATH"
.It Ev LC_ALL , LC_CTYPE , LANG
These variables control what subdirectories will be processed if the
.Fl L
option is used.
.It Ev MACHINE
If set, its value is used to override the current
machine type when searching machine specific subdirectories.
.It Ev MANPATH
Determines the set of directories to be processed if none are given on
the command line.
.El
.Sh FILES
.Bl -tag -width ".Pa /usr/share/man" -compact
.It Pa /usr/share/man
Default directory to process if the
.Ev MANPATH
environment variable is not set.
.It Pa */man/whatis
The default output file.
.El
.Sh EXIT STATUS
.Ex -std
.Sh SEE ALSO
.Xr apropos 1 ,
.Xr whatis 1
.Sh HISTORY
The
.Nm
command appeared in
.Fx 2.1 .
.Sh AUTHORS
.An -nosplit
The
.Nm
program was originally written in Perl and was contributed by
.An Wolfram Schneider .
The current version of
.Nm
was rewritten in C by
.An John Rochester .