-d

Print debugging information.

-v

Print verbose warning messages.

-r

Interpret each name as a regular expression. If a name matches any part of a page name, a match willbe made. This option causes whatis to be somewhat slower due to the nature of database searches.

-w

Interpret each name as a pattern containing shell style wildcards. For a match to be made, an expandedname must match the entire page name. This option causes whatis to be somewhat slower due to thenature of database searches.

-l

Do not trim output to the terminal width. Normally, output will be truncated to the terminal width toavoid ugly results from poorly-written NAME sections.

-s

Search only the given manual sections. list is a colon- or comma-separated list of sections. If anentry in list is a simple section, for example "3", then the displayed list of descriptions willinclude pages in sections "3", "3perl", "3x", and so on; while if an entry in list has an extension,for example "3perl", then the list will only include pages in that exact part of the manual section.

-m

If this system has access to other operating system's manual page names, they can be accessed usingthis option. To search NewOS's manual page names, use the option -m NewOS.The system specified can be a combination of comma delimited operating system names. To include asearch of the native operating system's manual page names, include the system name man in the argumentstring. This option will override the $SYSTEM environment variable.

-M

Specify an alternate set of colon-delimited manual page hierarchies to search. By default, whatis usesthe $MANPATH environment variable, unless it is empty or unset, in which case it will determine anappropriate manpath based on your $PATH environment variable. This option overrides the contents of$MANPATH.

-L

whatis will normally determine your current locale by a call to the C function setlocale(3) whichinterrogates various environment variables, possibly including $LC_MESSAGES and $LANG. To temporarilyoverride the determined value, use this option to supply a locale string directly to whatis. Note thatit will not take effect until the search for pages actually begins. Output such as the help messagewill always be displayed in the initially determined locale.

-C

Use this user configuration file rather than the default of ~/.manpath.

-?

Print a help message and exit.

--usage

Print a short usage message and exit.

-V

Display version information.EXIT STATUS0 Successful program execution.1 Usage, syntax or configuration file error.2 Operational error.16 Nothing was found that matched the criteria specified.ENVIRONMENTSYSTEM If $SYSTEM is set, it will have the same effect as if it had been specified as the argument to the -moption.MANPATHIf $MANPATH is set, its value is interpreted as the colon-delimited manual page hierarchy search pathto use.MANWIDTHIf $MANWIDTH is set, its value is used as the terminal width (see the --long option). If it is notset, the terminal width will be calculated using the value of $COLUMNS, an ioctl(2) if available, orfalling back to 80 characters if all else fails.FILES/usr/share/man/index.(bt|db|dir|pag)A traditional global index database cache./var/cache/man/index.(bt|db|dir|pag)An FHS compliant global index database cache./usr/share/man/.../whatisA traditional whatis text database.