whatis and windex Databases

The SunOS release 4.x man page table of contents and keyword database is called whatis. In the SunOS release 5.7 software, this information is in the windex file. In both releases, the database is created by the catman command, and is used by the man, apropos, and whatis commands.

The windex file also has a slightly different format than the whatis file, as you can see from the following comparison of the two release versions.

sunos4.1% man -k tset
tset, reset (1)    - establish or restore terminal characteristics

sunos5.6% man -k tset
reset  tset (1b)   - establish or restore terminal characteristics
tset   tset (1b)   - establish or restore terminal characteristics