lfs-book/appendixa/man-desc.xml

<sect2><title>Contents</title>

<para>
The Man package contains the man, apropos whatis and makewhatis
programs.
</para>

</sect2>

<sect2><title>Description</title>

<sect3><title>man</title>

<para>
man formats and displays the on-line manual pages.
</para>

</sect3>

<sect3><title>apropos</title>

<para>
apropos searches a set of database files containing short descriptions 
of system commands for keywords and  displays the result on the standard 
output.
</para>

</sect3>

<sect3><title>whatis</title>

<para>
whatis searches a set of database files containing short descriptions 
of system commands for keywords and displays the result on the standard 
output. Only complete word matches are displayed.
</para>

</sect3>

<sect3><title>makewhatis</title>

<para>
makewhatis reads all the manual pages contained in given sections of 
manpath or the pre-formatted pages contained in the given sections of 
catpath. For  each  page, it writes a line in the whatis database; each 
line consists of the name of the page  and  a  short  description, 
separated  by a dash. The description is extracted using the content of 
the NAME section of the manual page.
</para>

</sect3>

</sect2>