xref: /freebsd/contrib/mandoc/mansearch.3 (revision 2008043f386721d58158e37e0d7e50df8095942d)
1.\"	$Id: mansearch.3,v 1.5 2017/03/30 22:22:05 schwarze Exp $
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3.\" Copyright (c) 2014 Ingo Schwarze <schwarze@openbsd.org>
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17.Dd $Mdocdate: March 30 2017 $
18.Dt MANSEARCH 3
19.Os
20.Sh NAME
21.Nm mansearch
22.Nd search manual page databases
23.Sh SYNOPSIS
24.In stdint.h
25.In manconf.h
26.In mansearch.h
27.Ft int
28.Fo mansearch
29.Fa "const struct mansearch *search"
30.Fa "const struct manpaths *paths"
31.Fa "int argc"
32.Fa "char *argv[]"
33.Fa "struct manpage **res"
34.Fa "size_t *sz"
35.Fc
36.Sh DESCRIPTION
37The
38.Fn mansearch
39function returns information about manuals matching a search query from a
40.Xr mandoc.db 5
41database.
42.Pp
43The query arguments are as follows:
44.Bl -tag -width Ds
45.It Fa "const struct mansearch *search"
46Search options, defined in
47.In mansearch.h .
48.It Fa "const struct manpaths *paths"
49Directories to be searched, defined in
50.In manconf.h .
51.It Fa "int argc" , "char *argv[]"
52Search criteria, usually taken from the command line.
53.El
54.Pp
55The output arguments are as follows:
56.Bl -tag -width Ds
57.It Fa "struct manpage **res"
58Returns a pointer to an array of result structures defined in
59.In mansearch.h .
60The user is expected to call
61.Xr free 3
62on the
63.Va file ,
64.Va names ,
65and
66.Va output
67fields of all structures, as well as the
68.Fa res
69array itself.
70.It Fa "size_t *sz"
71Returns the number of result structures contained in
72.Fa res .
73.El
74.Sh IMPLEMENTATION NOTES
75For each manual page tree, the search is done in two steps.
76In the first step, a list of pages matching the search criteria is built.
77In the second step, the requested information about these pages is
78retrieved from the database and assembled into the
79.Fa res
80array.
81.Pp
82All function mentioned here are defined in the file
83.Pa mansearch.c .
84.Ss Finding matches
85Command line parsing is done by the function
86.Fn exprcomp
87building a singly linked list of
88.Vt expr
89structures, using the helper functions
90.Fn expr_and
91and
92.Fn exprterm .
93.Ss Assembling the results
94The names, sections, and architectures of the manuals found
95are assembled into the
96.Va names
97field of the result structure by the function
98.Fn buildnames .
99.Sh FILES
100.Bl -tag -width mandoc.db -compact
101.It Pa mandoc.db
102The manual page database.
103.El
104.Sh SEE ALSO
105.Xr apropos 1 ,
106.Xr mandoc.db 5 ,
107.Xr makewhatis 8
108.Sh HISTORY
109The
110.Fn mansearch
111subsystem first appeared in
112.Ox 5.6 .
113.Sh AUTHORS
114.An -nosplit
115A module to search manual page databases was first written by
116.An Kristaps Dzonsons Aq Mt kristaps@bsd.lv
117in 2011, at first using the Berkeley DB;
118he rewrote it for SQLite3 in 2012, and
119.An Ingo Schwarze Aq Mt schwarze@openbsd.org
120removed the dependency on SQLite3 in 2016.
121