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MAKEWHATIS
Section: Maintenance Commands (8) Index
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BSD mandoc
NAME
makewhatis
- index UNIX manuals
SYNOPSIS
[- aDnpQ
]
[- T utf8
]
[- C file
]
[- aDnpQ
]
[- T utf8
]
dir ...
[- DnpQ
]
[- T utf8
]
- d dir
[ file ...
]
[- Dnp
]
[- T utf8
]
- u dir
[ file ...
]
[- DQ
]
- t file ...
DESCRIPTION
The
utility extracts keywords from
UNIX
manuals and indexes them in a database for fast retrieval by
apropos(1),
whatis(1),
and
man(1)Ns's
- k
option.
By default,
creates a database in each
dir
using the files
man section /
[arch /
]
title . section
and
cat section /
[arch /
]
title . 0
in that directory.
Existing databases are replaced.
If a directory contains no manual pages, no database is created in that
directory.
If
dir
is not provided,
uses the default paths stipulated by
man.conf5.
The arguments are as follows:
- -a
-
Use all directories and files found below
dir ...
- -C file
-
Specify an alternative configuration
file
in
man.conf5
format.
- -D
-
Display all files added or removed to the index.
With a second
-D
also show all keywords added for each file.
- -d dir
-
Merge (remove and r-add)
file ...
to the database in
dir
- -n
-
Do not create or modify any database; scan and parse only,
and print manual page names and descriptions to standard output.
- -p
-
Print warnings about potential problems with manual pages
to the standard error output.
- -Q
-
Quickly build reduce-size databases
by reading only the NAME sections of manuals.
The resulting databases will usually contain names and descriptions only.
- -T utf8
-
Use UT-8 encoding instead of ASCII for strings stored in the databases.
- -t file ...
-
Check the given
files
for potential problems.
Implies
-a
-n
and
-p
All diagnostic messages are printed to the standard output;
the standard error output is not used.
- -u dir
-
Remove
file ...
from the database in
dir
If that causes the database to become empty, also delete the database file.
If fatal parse errors are encountered while parsing, the offending file
is printed to stderr, omitted from the index, and the parse continues
with the next input file.
ENVIRONMENT
- MANPATH
-
A colo-separated list of directories to create databases in.
Ignored if a
dir
argument or the
-t
option is specified.
FILES
- mandoc.db
-
A database of manpages relative to the directory of the file.
This file is portable across architectures and systems, so long as the
manpage hierarchy it indexes does not change.
- /etc/man.conf
-
The default
man(1)
configuration file.
EXIT STATUS
The
utility exits with one of the following values:
- 0
-
No errors occurred.
- 5
-
Invalid command line arguments were specified.
No input files have been read.
- 6
-
An operating system error occurred, for example memory exhaustion or an
error accessing input files.
Such errors cause
to exit at once, possibly in the middle of parsing or formatting a file.
The output databases are corrupt and should be removed.
SEE ALSO
apropos(1),
man(1),
whatis(1),
man.conf5
HISTORY
A
utility first appeared in
BSD 2
It was rewritten in
perl(1)
for
Ox 2.7
and in C for
Ox 5.6 .
The
dir
argument first appeared in
Nx 1.0 ;
the options
-dpt
in
Ox 2.7 ;
the option
-u
in
Ox 3.4 ;
and the options
-aCDnQT
in
Ox 5.6 .
AUTHORS
An -nosplit
An Bill Joy
wrote the original
BSD
in February 1979,
An Marc Espie
started the Perl version in 2000,
and the current version of
was written by
An Kristaps Dzonsons Aq Mt kristaps@bsd.lv
and
An Ingo Schwarze Aq Mt schwarze@openbsd.org .
Index
- NAME
-
- SYNOPSIS
-
- DESCRIPTION
-
- ENVIRONMENT
-
- FILES
-
- EXIT STATUS
-
- SEE ALSO
-
- HISTORY
-
- AUTHORS
-
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