June 6, 1993 WHATIS 1

### NAME

whatis - describe what a command is

### SYNOPSIS

whatis [-C path] [-M path] [-m path] command ...

### DESCRIPTION

whatis looks up a given command and gives the header line from the manual page. You can then use the man(1) command to get more information.

The options are as follows:

-C path
  Use different man(1) configuration file than the default, ```/etc/man.conf`.

-M path
  Override the list of standard directories whatis searches for its database named `````whatis.db`''. The supplied path must be a colon ``:'' separated list of directories. This search path may also be set using the environment variable ```MANPATH`.

-m path
  Augment the list of standard directories whatis searches for its database named `````whatis.db`''. The supplied path must be a colon ``:'' separated list of directories. These directories will be searched before the standard directories or the directories supplied with the -M option or the ```MANPATH` environment variable are searched.

### ENVIRONMENT

```MANPATH`
  The standard search path used by man(1) may be overridden by specifying a path in the ```MANPATH` environment variable.

### FILES

```whatis.db`
  name of the whatis databases
```/etc/man.conf`
  man(1) configuration file, used to get location of whatis databases if ```MANPATH` is not set.

### SEE ALSO

apropos(1), man(1), whereis(1), man.conf(5), makewhatis(8)

### HISTORY

The whatis command appeared in 3.0BSD.