Manual Pages  — MAKEWHATIS

By default, makewhatis creates a database in each dir using the files man section/[arch/]title . sectionand cat section/[arch/]title .0in that directory. Existing databases are replaced. If a directory contains no manual pages, no database is created in that directory. If dir is not provided, makewhatis uses the default paths stipulated by man.conf(5).

The arguments are as follows:

-a
	Use all directories and files found below dir ....
-C file
	Specify an alternative configuration file in man.conf(5) format.
-D
	Display all files added or removed to the index. With a second -D, also show all keywords added for each file.
-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.
-p
	Print warnings about potential problems with manual pages to the standard error output.
-Q
	Quickly build reduced-size databases by reading only the NAME sections of manuals. The resulting databases will usually contain names and descriptions only.
-T utf8
	Use UTF-8 encoding instead of ASCII for strings stored in the databases.
-t file ...
	Check the given files for potential problems. Implies -a, -n, and -p. All diagnostic messages are printed to the standard output; the standard error output is not used.
-u dir
	Remove file ... from the database in dir. If that causes the database to become empty, also delete the database file.

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.