NAME

whatis − describe what a command is

SYNOPSIS

whatis command ... 

DESCRIPTION

Whatis looks up a given command and prints the header line from the manual section.  You can run the man(1) command to get more information about a particular command.  If the line starts ‘name(section) ...’ you can type ‘man section name’ to display the documentation for it.  For example, the line whatis ed prints the line "ed (1) - text editor", and the line man 1 ed prints the manual. 

Whatis is actually the −f option to the man(1) command. 

FILES

/usr/man/whatisData base

SEE ALSO

man(1), catman(8)

4th Berkeley Distribution  —  May 7, 1986