'\" te
.\" Copyright (c) 1992, 2011, Oracle and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved.
.TH whatis 1 "8 May 2011" "SunOS 5.11" "User Commands"
.SH NAME
whatis \- display a one-line summary about a keyword
.SH SYNOPSIS
.LP
.nf
\fBwhatis\fR \fIcommand\fR...
.fi

.SH DESCRIPTION
.sp
.LP
\fBwhatis\fR looks up a given \fIcommand\fR and displays the header line from the manual section. You can then run the \fBman\fR(1) command to get more information. If the line starts \fBname(\fIsection\fR)\fR.\|.\|. you can do \fBman\fR \fB-s\fR\fB\fIsection\fR name\fR to get the documentation for it. Try \fBwhatis ed\fR and then you should do \fBman\fR \fB-s\fR \fB1 ed\fR to get the manual page for \fBed\fR(1).
.sp
.LP
\fBwhatis\fR is actually just the \fB-f\fR option to the \fBman\fR(1) command.
.sp
.LP
\fBwhatis\fR uses the \fB/usr/share/man/man_index/*\fR index files. The index files are either automatically generated by an SMF service as described in \fBman\fR(1) and \fBman\fR(5) or manually generated by using \fBcatman\fR(1M) with the \fB-w\fR option. If the index files do not exist, \fBwhatis\fR is run slower since it looks directly into manual page files. 
.SH FILES
.sp
.ne 2
.mk
.na
\fB\fB/usr/share/man/man_index/*\fR\fR
.ad
.RS 30n
.rt  
Table of Contents and keyword database.
.sp
Generated files include: 
.RS +4
.TP
.ie t \(bu
.el o
\fB/usr/share/man/man_index/man.idx\fR
.RE
.RS +4
.TP
.ie t \(bu
.el o
\fB/usr/share/man/man_index/man.dic\fR
.RE
.RS +4
.TP
.ie t \(bu
.el o
\fB/usr/share/man/man_index/man.frq\fR 
.RE
.RS +4
.TP
.ie t \(bu
.el o
\fB/usr/share/man/man_index/man.pos\fR
.RE
.RE

.SH ATTRIBUTES
.sp
.LP
See \fBattributes\fR(5) for descriptions of the following attributes:
.sp

.sp
.TS
tab() box;
cw(2.75i) |cw(2.75i) 
lw(2.75i) |lw(2.75i) 
.
ATTRIBUTE TYPEATTRIBUTE VALUE
_
Availabilitytext/doctools
_
CSIEnabled
_
Interface StabilityCommitted
.TE

.SH SEE ALSO
.sp
.LP
\fBapropos\fR(1), \fBman\fR(1), \fBcatman\fR(1M), \fBattributes\fR(5), \fBman\fR(5)