.\" Copyright (c) 2002 John Rochester
.\" All rights reserved.
.\"
.\" Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without
.\" modification, are permitted provided that the following conditions
.\" are met:
.\" 1. Redistributions of source code must retain the above copyright
.\"    notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer.
.\" 2. Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the above copyright
.\"    notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer in the
.\"    documentation and/or other materials provided with the distribution.
.\"
.\" THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED BY THE AUTHOR AND CONTRIBUTORS ``AS IS'' AND
.\" ANY EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE
.\" IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE
.\" ARE DISCLAIMED.  IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHOR OR CONTRIBUTORS BE LIABLE
.\" FOR ANY DIRECT, INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, EXEMPLARY, OR CONSEQUENTIAL
.\" DAMAGES (INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, PROCUREMENT OF SUBSTITUTE GOODS
.\" OR SERVICES; LOSS OF USE, DATA, OR PROFITS; OR BUSINESS INTERRUPTION)
.\" HOWEVER CAUSED AND ON ANY THEORY OF LIABILITY, WHETHER IN CONTRACT, STRICT
.\" LIABILITY, OR TORT (INCLUDING NEGLIGENCE OR OTHERWISE) ARISING IN ANY WAY
.\" OUT OF THE USE OF THIS SOFTWARE, EVEN IF ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF
.\" SUCH DAMAGE.
.\"
.\" $FreeBSD: src/usr.bin/makewhatis/makewhatis.1,v 1.3 2002/05/18 15:39:56 ru Exp $
.\" $DragonFly: src/usr.sbin/makewhatis/makewhatis.8,v 1.1 2004/03/25 18:05:48 joerg Exp $
.\"
.Dd May 12, 2002
.Dt MAKEWHATIS 8
.Os
.Sh NAME
.Nm makewhatis
.Nd "create whatis database"
.Sh SYNOPSIS
.Nm
.Op Fl a
.Op Fl i Ar column
.Op Fl n Ar name
.Op Fl o Ar file
.Op Fl v
.Op Fl L
.Op Ar directories ...
.Sh DESCRIPTION
The
.Nm
utility collects the names and short descriptions from all the unformatted
man pages in the
.Ar directories
and puts them into a file used by the
.Xr whatis 1
and
.Xr apropos 1
commands.
Directories may be separated by colons instead of spaces.
If no
.Ar directories
are specified, the contents of the
.Ev MANPATH
environment variable will be used, or if that is not set, the default directory
.Pa /usr/share/man
will be processed.
.Pp
The options are as follows:
.Bl -tag -width ".Fl i Ar column"
.It Fl a
Appends to the output file(s) instead of replacing them.
The output
will be sorted with duplicate lines removed, but may have obsolete
entries.
.It Fl i Ar column
Indents the description by
.Ar column
characters.
The default value is 24.
.It Fl n Ar name
Uses
.Ar name
instead of
.Pa whatis .
.It Fl o Ar file
Outputs all lines to the
.Ar file
instead of
.Pa */man/whatis .
.It Fl v
Makes
.Nm
more verbose about what it is doing.
.It Fl L
Process only localized subdirectories corresponding to the locale specified
in the standard environment variables.
.El
.Sh ENVIRONMENT
.Bl -tag -width ".Ev MANPATH"
.It Ev LC_ALL , LC_CTYPE , LANG
These variables control what subdirectories will be processed if the
.Fl L
option is used.
.It Ev MACHINE
If set, its value is used to override the current
machine type when searching machine specific subdirectories.
.It Ev MANPATH
Determines the set of directories to be processed if none are given on
the command line.
.El
.Sh FILES
.Bl -tag -width ".Pa /usr/share/man" -compact
.It Pa /usr/share/man
Default directory to process if the
.Ev MANPATH
environment variable is not set.
.It Pa */man/whatis
The default output file.
.El
.Sh DIAGNOSTICS
.Ex -std
.Sh SEE ALSO
.Xr apropos 1 ,
.Xr whatis 1
.Sh HISTORY
The
.Nm
command appeared in
.Fx 2.1 .
.Sh AUTHORS
.An -nosplit
The
.Nm
program was originally written in Perl and was contributed by
.An Wolfram Schneider .
The current version of
.Nm
was rewritten in C by
.An John Rochester .