SYNOPSIS
apropos [-dhV] [-e|-w|-r] [-m system[,...]] [-M path] key
word ...
DESCRIPTION
Each manual page has a short description available within
it. apropos searches the descriptions for instances of
keyword.
keyword is usually a regular expression, as if (-r) was
used, or may contain wildcards (-w) , or match the exact
keyword (-e) . Using these options, it may be necessary
to quote the keyword or escape (\) the special characters
to stop the shell from interpreting them.
The standard matching rules allow matches to be made
against the page name and word boundaries in the descrip
tion.
OPTIONS
-d, --debug
Print debugging information.
-r, --regex
Interpret each keyword as a regular expression.
This is the default behaviour. Each keyword will
be matched against the page names and the descrip
tions independently. It can match any part of
either. The match is not limited to word bound
aries.
-w, --wildcard
Interpret each keyword as a pattern containing
shell style wildcards. Each keyword will be
matched against the page names and the descriptions
independently. A match will only be found if an
expanded keyword matches an entire description or
page name.
-e, --exact
Each keyword will be exactly matched against the
page names and the descriptions.
-m system[,...], --systems=system[,...]
If this system has access to other operating sys
tem's manual page descriptions, they can be
searched using this option. To search NewOS's man
ual page descriptions, use the option -m NewOS.
The system specified can be a combination of comma-
delimited operating system names. To include a
search of the native operating system's whatis
Print a help message and exit.
-V, --version
Display version and author information.
EXIT STATUS
0 Successful program execution.
1 Usage, syntax or configuration file error.
2 Operational error.
16 Nothing was found that matched the criteria speci
fied.
ENVIRONMENT
SYSTEM If $SYSTEM is set, it will have the same effect as
if it had been specified as the argument to the -m
option.
MANPATH
If $MANPATH is set, its value is interpreted as the
colon-delimited manual page hierarchy search path
to use.
POSIXLY_CORRECT
If $POSIXLY_CORRECT is set, even to a null value,
the default apropos search will be as an extended
regex (-r) . This is anyway the default behaviour.
FILES
/usr/share/man/index.(bt|db|dir|pag)
A traditional global index database cache.
/var/cache/man/index.(bt|db|dir|pag)
An alternate or FHS compliant global index database
cache.
/usr/share/man/.../whatis
A traditional whatis text database.
SEE ALSO
whatis(1), man(1).
AUTHOR
Wilf. (G.Wilford@ee.surrey.ac.uk).
Fabrizio Polacco (fpolacco@debian.org).
2.3.19 14 May 2001 apropos(1)
Man(1) output converted with
man2html