what(1)

what1

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

Usage

what [-qs] [file ...]

Overview

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:

-q

Only output the match text, rather than formatting it.

-s

Stop searching each file after the first match.

Exit status

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

Releases

87 releases since FreeBSD 2.0.5-RELEASE; the text changed 44 times.

  1. 2.0.5–2.1.7.1
  2. 2.2.2
  3. 2.2.5–2.2.6
  4. 2.2.7–2.2.8
  5. 2.2.9
  6. 3.0–3.2
  7. 3.3–3.5.1
  8. 4.0–4.3
  9. 4.4–4.11
  10. 5.0–5.2.1
  11. 5.3–5.5
  12. 6.0–6.3
  13. 6.4
  14. 7.0
  15. 7.1
  16. 7.2
  17. 7.3
  18. 7.4
  19. 8.0
  20. 8.1
  21. 8.2
  22. 8.3
  23. 8.4
  24. 9.0
  25. 9.1
  26. 9.2
  27. 9.3
  28. 10.0
  29. 10.1
  30. 10.2
  31. 10.3
  32. 10.4
  33. 11.0
  34. 11.1
  35. 11.2
  36. 11.3
  37. 11.4
  38. 12.0
  39. 12.1
  40. 12.2
  41. 12.3
  42. 12.4
  43. 13.0–13.2
  44. 13.3–14.5
  45. 15.0–16.0

-q since FreeBSD 6.0-RELEASE; -s since FreeBSD 2.2.7-RELEASE.

Standards

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.

History

The what command appeared in 4.0BSD.

Bugs

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

From base 16.0-CURRENT-20261027-61c70dc16a79 in FreeBSD 16.0-CURRENT (2026-10-27). Parsed by carta from the page's mdoc source.