Re: whatis(1)

[Kristaps Dzonsons <kristaps@bsd.lv>]

On 27/11/2011 19:13, Ingo Schwarze wrote:
> Hi,
>
> Kristaps Dzonsons wrote on Sun, Nov 27, 2011 at 01:16:40PM +0100:
>
>> Enclosed is a simple implementation of whatis(1).  It's a mode of
>> apropos(1) where arguments are re-written as
>>
>>    foo  =>   Nm~^foo$
>>
>> This follows OpenBSD's method;
>
> Not really.  A cursory look gives me the impression that OpenBSD
> whatis(1) matches whole words in Nm, case-insentively.  However,
> i didn't really study the details yet.  For example:
>
>    $ whatis man
>    Pod::Man (3p) - Convert POD data to formatted *roff input
>    man (1) - display manual pages
>    man (7) - legacy formatting language for manual pages
>    man.conf (5) - configuration file for man (1)
>
>> other systems, like my Mac, search
>> for both `Nm' and `Nd', but I'm avoiding this for now because I
>> can't figure out the proper regex for word boundaries
>
>    Nm~[[:<:]]man[[:>:]]
>
>> in multi-word `Nd' strings.
>
>    Nd~[[:<:]]man[[:>:]]  # matches Nd only
>    ~[[:<:]]man[[:>:]]  # matches both Nm and Nd
>
>> Thoughts?
>
> Something like this will be needed, yes.

Ingo,

To get the ball rolling, I just checked in whatis.1 and the code 
modified to use your regexp.  I simplified the call into apropos_db.h 
with termcomp() instead of exprcomp(), as this mode might be useful for 
man.cgi too.  The search expression is now case insensitive and 
~[[:<:]]term[[:>:]].  (Thanks!)

NOTE: this fixed a subtle bug in apropos_db.h in compiling case 
insensitive regular expression.

Thanks,

Kristaps
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