MAKEWHATIS(8)           FreeBSD System Manager's Manual          MAKEWHATIS(8)

NAME
     makewhatis - index UNIX manuals

SYNOPSIS
     makewhatis [-aDnpQ] [-T utf8] [-C file]
     makewhatis [-aDnpQ] [-T utf8] dir ...
     makewhatis [-DnpQ] [-T utf8] -d dir [file ...]
     makewhatis [-Dnp] [-T utf8] -u dir [file ...]
     makewhatis [-DQ] -t file ...

DESCRIPTION
     The makewhatis utility extracts keywords from UNIX manuals and indexes
     them in a database for fast retrieval by apropos(1), whatis(1), and
     man(1)'s -k option.

     By default, makewhatis creates a database in each dir using the files
     mansection/[arch/]title.section and catsection/[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, makewhatis uses the default paths stipulated by man.conf(5).

     The arguments are as follows:

     -a       Use all directories and files found below dir ....

     -C file  Specify an alternative configuration file in man.conf(5) 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 re-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 reduced-size databases by reading only the NAME
              sections of manuals.  The resulting databases will usually
              contain names and descriptions only.

     -T utf8  Use UTF-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 colon-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 makewhatis 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 makewhatis
             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.conf(5)

HISTORY
     A makewhatis utility first appeared in 2BSD.  It was rewritten in perl(1)
     for OpenBSD 2.7 and in C for OpenBSD 5.6.

     The dir argument first appeared in NetBSD 1.0; the options -dpt in
     OpenBSD 2.7; the option -u in OpenBSD 3.4; and the options -aCDnQT in
     OpenBSD 5.6.

AUTHORS
     Bill Joy wrote the original BSD makewhatis in February 1979, Marc Espie
     started the Perl version in 2000, and the current version of makewhatis
     was written by Kristaps Dzonsons <kristaps@bsd.lv> and Ingo Schwarze
     <schwarze@openbsd.org>.

FreeBSD 13.1-RELEASE-p6          May 17, 2017          FreeBSD 13.1-RELEASE-p6