.TH MAKEWHATIS 1
.SH NAME
makewhatis \- build the whatis(5) database
.SH SYNOPSIS
.B makewhatis
.I directory
.SH DESCRIPTION
.B Makewhatis
makes the
.BR whatis (5)
database in the given manual page directory.  This database is used by
.BR man (1)
to map titles to manual page names and by
.BR whatis (1)
to give one line descriptions.  See
.BR whatis (5)
for a desciption of what a whatis database should look like and the
restrictions that are placed on the NAME sections so that
.B makewhatis
can make whatis lines out of the manual pages.
.PP
.B Makewhatis
not only scans all the man?/page.? files, but also takes a look into the
cat? directories for manual pages without an unformatted counterpart, because
there are still a few manual pages around that, horror of horrors, are
written as flat text.
.SH "SEE ALSO"
.BR whatis (5).
.SH BUGS
Those human made cat pages are written in so many formats that it is
amazing that a whatis line can be pulled out of them.
.PP
Removing only font and size changes from the NAME section is often not
enough.
.SH AUTHOR
Kees J. Bot (kjb@cs.vu.nl)