MAKEWHATIS(8)

💖 MAKEWHATIS 💖 — the makewhatis(8) page, but make it a group chat

okay so bestie, welcome to makewhatis(8) — a System Manager's Manual situation. Yes it's section 8, yes it's giving sysadmin, and yes you're gonna love it. 🎀

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✨ NAME ✨

makewhatis — index UNIX manuals. that's it, that's the whole job description, and she does it flawlessly. 💅

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🌸 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 ...

look at all those little flags, so many options, she's booked and busy. ✨

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🦋 DESCRIPTION 🦋

So the makewhatis utility pulls keywords out of Unix manuals and indexes them into a database so they can be found fast later by apropos(1), whatis(1), and man(1)'s -k option. it's the backstage crew for your manpages, fr fr. 🔥

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 get replaced — out with the old, in with the new, no cap. If a directory has no manual pages in it, no database is created in that directory at all. and if dir isn't provided, makewhatis just uses the default paths stipulated by man.conf(5). she knows where to go. 💅

The arguments are as follows:

• -a — use all directories and files found below dir .... go big or go home.
• -C file — specify an alternative configuration file in man.conf(5) format. pick your own adventure.
• -D — display all files added or removed to the index. and with a second -D, it also shows all keywords added for each file. double the D, double the tea. 🫖
• -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. look but don't touch energy. 🙈
• -p — print warnings about potential problems with manual pages to the standard error output. she's a little nosy, lovingly.
• -Q — quickly build reduced-size databases by reading only the NAME sections of manuals. the resulting databases will usually contain names and descriptions only. speed run, slay.
• -T utf8 — use UTF-8 encoding instead of ASCII for strings stored in the databases. fancy characters, we love to see it. ✨
• -t file ... — check the given files for potential problems. this implies -a, -n, and -p. All diagnostic messages are printed to the standard output; the standard error output is not used. so if you're looking for errors in stderr, they're not there, they're in stdout, okay?? 😭
• -u dir — remove file ... from the database in dir. and if that makes the database become empty, it also deletes the database file. she leaves no crumbs. 💀

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. she does not stop the whole party for one bad guest. periodt.

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🌈 ENVIRONMENT 🌈

• MANPATH — a colon-separated list of directories to create databases in. Ignored if a dir argument or the -t option is specified. she's got her own plans, sorry bestie. 💜

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🎀 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. take her anywhere, she'll behave. 👑
• /etc/man.conf — the default man(1) configuration file.

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⭐ EXIT STATUS ⭐

The makewhatis utility exits with one of the following values:

• 0 — no errors occurred. we love a clean run, iconic. 🌸
• 5 — invalid command line arguments were specified. No input files have been read. rude of you, honestly. 😭
• 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. like, actually, throw them out, do not pass go. 💀

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👀 SEE ALSO 👀

apropos(1), man(1), whatis(1), man.conf(5)

the whole squad, the friend group, the icons. 🫶

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📜 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. glow-up after glow-up after glow-up, truly. ✨

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. we've been collecting flags like friendship bracelets. 🌈

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💖 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>.

legends, all of them, no notes. 👑

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okay that's the whole page bestie!! this one's from the Debian crew, dated May 17, 2017, and it's the MAKEWHATIS(8) manual — go forth and index your manuals, you absolute main character. mwah 💅✨