Sometimes you will see a command and don't know for sure what it does. An easy way to tell is to use the whatis command to find the relevant information.
First, whatis is described in the man page as:
[code]
whatis(1) whatis(1)
NAME
whatis - search the whatis database for complete words.
SYNOPSIS
whatis keyword ...
DESCRIPTION
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.
The whatis database is created using the command /usr/sbin/makewhatis.
AUTHOR
John W. Eaton was the original author of man. Zeyd M. Ben-Halim released man 1.2, and Andries Brouwer followed up with versions 1.3
thru 1.5p. Federico Lucifredi
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An example is using the command twolame:
[code]
ewiget@urf ~ $ whatis twolame
twolame (1) - an optimised MPEG Audio Layer 2 (MP2) encoder
[/code]
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Note: Ed Wiget, http://www.edwiget.name, has been a linux/unix system admin since 1995. He has many certifications. He is currently working on a degree in computer engineering, with an emphasis on computer/network security and forensics.
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