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>.