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makewhatis(1M)


makewhatis -- add entries to the keyword database

Synopsis

/usr/man/bin/makewhatis directory ...

Description

makewhatis writes entries for local manual pages to a keyword database in whatis(4) format. A keyword database file can be used by the utilities man(1), apropos(1bsd), and whatis(1bsd).

Only root can use makewhatis.

makewhatis looks in the specified directory(s) for the troff source of the manual pages to add. The directories must be subdirectories of the standard root for manual pages /usr/lib/scohelp/LANG/man (/usr/lib/scohelp/en_US.ISO8859-1/man is linked to /usr/man for compatibility with SCO OpenServer(TM)). This path can be changed using the MANPATH environment variable.

Each entry in whatis consists of a line specifying a manual page name, its section, and a short description. makewhatis uses troff source that must contain the following standard man key lines in this order:

   .TH name section
   .SH NAME
   name \- single-line description
makewhatis is flexible in what it accepts in the manual page source: For example, the source for this manual page might look like:
   .TH	makewhatis 1M
   .\" Note the mixed case of NAME below
   .SH NaMe
   .\" This comment line is ignored
   makewhatis 	\- add entries to the keyword database
   .
   .
   .
This produces the following keyword database entry:
   makewhatis (1M)	- add entries to the keyword database

Files


/usr/lib/scohelp/LANG/man/.SectionData/whatis/section
keyword databases

/usr/lib/scohelp/LANG/man
root of the standard manual page directory subtree (/usr/lib/scohelp/en_US.ISO8859-1/man is linked to /usr/man for compatibility with SCO OpenServer)

/usr/lib/scohelp/LANG/man/man.section/*
man macro source files (unformatted) for manual pages

References

apropos(1bsd), man(1), whatis(1bsd), whatis(4)
© 2004 The SCO Group, Inc. All rights reserved.
UnixWare 7 Release 7.1.4 - 25 April 2004