apropos - locate commands by keyword lookup
apropos [-C file] [-M path] [-m path] keyword [...]
apropos shows which manual pages contain instances of any of
the given
keyword(s) in their title line. Each word is considered
separately and
case of letters is ignored. Words which are part of other
words are considered;
when looking for ``compile'', apropos will also
list all instances
of ``compiler''.
If the line output by apropos starts ``name (section) ...'',
you can enter
``man section name'' to get its documentation.
The options are as follows:
-C file Specify an alternative configuration file in
man.conf(5) format.
-M path Override the list of standard directories apropos
searches for a
database named whatis.db. The supplied path must
be a colon
(`:') separated list of directories. This search
path may also
be set using the environment variable MANPATH.
-m path Augment the list of standard directories apropos
searches for
its database. The supplied path must be a colon
(`:') separated
list of directories. These directories will be
searched before
the standard directories, or the directories supplied with the
-M option or the MANPATH environment variable.
MANPATH The standard search path used by man(1) may be
overridden by
specifying a path in the MANPATH environment variable. The format
of the path is a colon (`:') separated list of
directories.
whatis.db name of the apropos database
/etc/man.conf default man(1) configuration file
man(1), whatis(1), whereis(1), man.conf(5), makewhatis(8)
The apropos command appeared in 3.0BSD.
OpenBSD 3.6 June 29, 1993
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