MANDOC.DB(5)

NAME
mandoc.db - manual page database

DESCRIPTION
The mandoc.db SQLite3 file format is used to store information about installed manual pages to facilitate semantic searching for manuals. Each manual page tree contains its own mandoc.db file; see FILES for examples.

Such database files are generated by makewhatis(8) and used by apropos(1) and whatis(1).

One line in the following tables describes:

mpages
    One physical manual page file, no matter how many times and under which names it may appear in the file system.

mlinks
    One entry in the file system, no matter which content it points to.

names
    One manual page name, no matter whether it appears in a page header, in a NAME or SYNOPSIS section, or as a file name.

keys
    One chunk of text from some macro invocation.

Each record in the latter three tables uses its pageid column to point to a record in the mpages table.

The other columns are as follows; unless stated otherwise, they are of type TEXT.

mpages.desc
    The description line (‘-’) of the page.

mpages.form
    The INTEGER 1 if the page is unformatted, i.e. in mdoc(7) or man(7) format, and 2 if it is formatted, i.e. a ‘cat’ page.

mlinks.sec
    The manual section as found in the subdirectory name.

mlinks.arch
    The manual architecture as found in the subdirectory name, or "any".

mlinks.name
    The manual name as found in the file name.

names.bits
    An INTEGER bit mask telling whether the name came from a header line, from the NAME or SYNOPSIS section, or from a file name. Bits are defined in <mansearch.h>.

names.name
    The name itself.

keys.bits
    An INTEGER bit mask telling which semantic contexts the key was found in; defined in <mansearch.h>, documented in apropos(1).

keys.key
    The string found in those contexts.

FILES
/usr/share/mandoc.db
    The manual page database for the base system.
/usr/X11R6/mandoc.db
    The same for the X(7) Window System.
/usr/local/mandoc.db
    The same for packages(7).

SEE ALSO
apropos(1), man(1), sqlite3(1), whatis(1), makewhatis(8)

HISTORY
A manual page database /usr/lib/whatis first appeared in 2BSD. The present format first appeared in OpenBSD 5.6.

AUTHORS
-nosplit The original version of makewhatis(8) was written by Bill Joy in 1979. An SQLite3 version was first implemented by Kristaps Dzonsons <kristaps@bsd.lv> in 2012. The present database format was designed by Ingo Schwarze <schwarze@openbsd.org> in 2014.