makewhatis
Hurricane Electric Internet Services
NAME
makewhatis - builds the whatis manual database
SYNOPSIS
makewhatis [-h] [-v] [-u] [-w] [manpath]
DESCRIPTION
Makewhatis builds and updates the whatis databases used by
apropos(1). It requires Perl(1) version 4 or higher to
run.
OPTIONS
Makewhatis accepts the following options:
-h Print a brief help message and exit.
-u Update the database with newer manual pages only.
The default is to completely rebuild the database.
-v Verbose operation.
-w Use `man -w` to obtain the manpath. This may be
used in addition to a user-specified manpath.
-c This option is silently ignored on purpose.
manpath A colon-seperated list of directories to process,
such as "/usr/man:/usr/local/man". More than one
manpath may be specified, but if none is speci-
fied, and the -w switch is not set, then the con-
tents of the $MANPATH environment variable will be
used.
ENVIRONMENT
MANPATH Default path of directories to process.
SEE ALSO
apropos(1),man(1),zcat(1)
BUGS
Not all possible nroff commands are detected and filtered
out of source man pages; more will be added as they are
needed.
The processing for "pre-processed" man pages is also prob-
ably incomplete; this too will be modified as necessary.
Although duplicate entries are filtered out of the path,
there is currently no check for links pointing to the same
directories, which means a directory may be processed more
than once.
Any manpath specified may not start with a dash character.
COPYRIGHT
Copyright (C) 1995 by Steve "Mr. Bassman" Bryant
Permission is hereby given to redistribute this program
and accompanying manual page at no cost to the recipient
(media fee notwithstanding), providing it is distributed
in its entirety. It may not be modified or be included in
any commercial product without the author's permission.
WARNING
This software is provided "as-is", with no warranty what-
soever. Use it entirely at your own risk. Neither the
author nor the supplier of this software may be held
responsible for any damage caused due to the use or misuse
of this software.
AUTHOR
This version was written in Perl from scratch by Steve
"Mr. Bassman" Bryant <spbryant@tardis.soc.staffs.ac.uk>
Don't expect a quick response to email - I currently have
no net access myself, although at the time of writing I
may be reached at itbryant@hpbbi26.bbn.hp.com.
Hurricane Electric Internet Services
Copyright (C) 1998
Hurricane Electric.
All Rights Reserved.