Manual pages › General commands (1)
whatis(1)
display a one-line summary about a keyword
From the original Amiga UNIX 2.1 manual. Some things it mentions may not be in this release.
NAME
whatis - display a one-line summary about a keyword
SYNOPSIS
whatis command...
DESCRIPTION
whatis looks up a given command and displays the header line from the manual section. You can then run the man(1) command to get more information. If the line starts `name(section) ...' you can do `man section name' to get the documentation for it. Try `whatis ed' and then you should do `man 1 ed' to get the manual page for ed(1). whatis is actually just the -f option to the man command.
FILES
/usr/share/man/whatis data base
SEE ALSO
man(1), catman(1M)