WHAT(1) General Commands Manual WHAT(1)

what
search files for SCCS identifiers

what [-s] file ...

The what utility reads each file operand and searches for sequences of the form “@(#)” as inserted by SCCS and SCCS-compatible version control systems. It prints the remainder of the string following this marker, up to a null character, newline, double quote, backslash, or “>” character.

If the -s option is specified, only the first occurrence of an identification string in each file is printed.

The what utility exits 0 if any matches were found, and 1 otherwise.

The what utility conforms to X/Open Portability Guide Issue 4, Version 2 (“XPG4.2”).

The what command appeared in 4.0BSD.

As BSD is not licensed to distribute SCCS this is a rewrite of the what command which is part of SCCS, and may not behave exactly the same as that command does.
December 12, 2015 NetBSD 9.4