WHATIS(1) — UNIX Programmer’s Manual
NAME
whatis − describe what a command is
SYNOPSIS
whatis command ...
DESCRIPTION
Whatis looks up a given command and gives 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.
Whatis is actually just the −f option to the man(1) command.
FILES
/usr/share/man/whatisData base
SEE ALSO
4th Berkeley Distribution — Revision 1.3 of 08/07/90