WHAT(1) General Commands Manual WHAT(1)

whatshow what versions of object modules were used to construct a file

what [-qs] [file ...]

The what utility searches each specified file for sequences of the form “@(#)” as inserted by the SCCS source code control system. It prints the remainder of the string following this marker, up to a NUL character, newline, double quote, ‘>’ character, or backslash.

The following options are available:

Only output the match text, rather than formatting it.
Stop searching each file after the first match.

Exit status is 0 if any matches were found, otherwise 1.

ident(1), strings(1)

The what utility conforms to IEEE Std 1003.1-2001 (“POSIX.1”). The -q option is a non-standard FreeBSD extension which may not be available on other operating systems.

The what command appeared in 4.0BSD.

This is a rewrite of the SCCS command of the same name, and behavior may not be identical.

December 14, 2006 macOS 15.0