MAKEWHATIS(8)							MAKEWHATIS(8)



NAME
       makewhatis - Create the whatis database

SYNOPSIS
       makewhatis [-u] [-v] [-w] [-s sections ] [-c [catpath]] [manpath]

DESCRIPTION
       makewhatis  reads all the manual pages contained in the given sections
       of manpath or the preformatted pages contained in the  given  sections
       of  catpath.   For each page, it writes a line in the whatis database;
       each line consists of the name of the page and  a  short	 description,
       separated by a dash. The description is extracted using the content of
       the NAME section of the manual page.

       Since other languages use a different term for the NAME section, make-
       whatis  recognizes  the	equivalent  terms in Czech, Italian, Finnish,
       French, German and Spanish.

       If no manpath argument is given, /usr/man is assumed by default.

OPTIONS
       -u     Update database with new pages.

       -v     Verbose output

       -w     Use manpath obtained from 'man --path'

       -s sections
	      Looks in the sections of manpath or catpath.  If the option  is
	      absent, its value is assumed to be ?1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 n l?

       -c catpath
	      The  preformatted	 manual pages located in catpath are scanned.
	      If the argument is not provided, it is assumed to be the	first
	      existing directory between /usr/man/preformat and /usr/man.

EXAMPLES
       To rebuild only /usr/X11R6/man/whatis and /usr/local/man/whatis

	      makewhatis /usr/X11R6/man /usr/local/man

       To  rebuild  all the databases, including those of the Finnish, French
       and Italian translations

	      LANGUAGE=fi:fr:it makewhatis -w

BUGS
       makewhatis may not handle too well manual pages written with non-stan-
       dard troff macros, such as the Tcl/Tk pages.

       makewhatis does not work on preformatted translations.

SEE ALSO
       apropos(1), man(1), whatis(1)



			       22 January 1999			MAKEWHATIS(8)

UNIX/Linux commands referenced on this page:

1. whatis
2. manpath
3. man
4. troff
5. as