NAME
whatis - describe what a command is

SYNOPSIS
whatis [ -M path ] [ -m path ] command ...

DESCRIPTION
Whatis looks up a given command and gives the header line from the
manual page. You can then use the man(1) command to get more
information.

The options are as follows:

M Override the list of standard directories which whatis
searches for a database named whatis.db. The supplied path
must be a colon (":") separated list of directories. This
search path may also be set using the environment variable
MANPATH.

m Augment the list of standard directories where whatis searches
for its database. The supplied path must be a colon (":")
separated list of directories. These directories will be
searched before the standard directories or the directories
specified using the M option or the MANPATH environment
variable.

ENVIRONMENT
MANPATH
The standard search path used by whatis may be overridden by
specifying a path in the MANPATH environment variable. The
format of the path is a colon (":") separated list of
directories.

FILES
/usr/man/whatis.db database

SEE ALSO
apropos(1), man(1), whereis(1)