whatis whereis

Hi All,

How many of you folks know the difference b/w these 2 Linux commands - whatis and whereis?

Ok here you go...

Lets be practical...

I hope many of us or I can say most of us - know the command 'ls'..

So lets implement 'whatis' and 'whereis' commands on 'ls'

whereis ls - shows the path of ls command - where it is installed. For my system and for many of our systems as well - it will give an output of the sort
ls: /bin/ls

Next - 'whatis ls' - this command would produce an output as -
ls (1) - list directory contents

I need not explain what is 'whatis' :)

Enjoy the weekend,
Ananth Gouri