whatfor - A Linux utility to give descriptive file listings

'whatfor' is designed to help newcomers to the Linux system become better acquainted with the numerous files on their system. It is used like the 'ls' program but appends one-line descriptions to each of the files as they are listed if a matching entry exists in whatfor's 3500-name database.

The file link below downloads a tar file which when untarred (tar xf whatfor.tar) produces three Red Hat Package manager (rpm) files:

• a binary for Intel Pentium processors
• a binary for "686" processors
• a source rpm for those who want the source code

Typically one does the following to install the Pentium binary:

rpm -Uvh whatfor-0.3.05-1.i586.rpm

The README contains the GNU License and installation instructions, and the man pages (whatfor and whatfor_db) have usage instructions and database format information.

Linux file description utility packages. (337920 bytes)

The content of this page was last revised on August 1, 2001.

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Last updated: April 10, 2006