APROPOS(1) BSD General Commands Manual APROPOS(1)NAME
apropos -- search the complete content of all man pages
SYNOPSIS
apropos [-123456789Ccp] [-n Number of results] [-S machine] [-s section] query
DESCRIPTION
The apropos utility performs a full text search over the complete content of all man pages. It uses the FTS engine of Sqlite to perform the
search. The database is created with the help of makemandb(8) utility.
This implementation of the apropos utility is more sophisticated than the classical version of apropos. Like modern search applications, it
uses advanced techniques like stemming and term weighting to rank the matching results in decreasing order of relevance. By default apropos
will only display the top 10 matches in the output.
Quotes are optional for specifying multiword queries.
It supports the following options:
-1 Search only within section 1 manual pages.
-2 Search only within section 2 manual pages.
-3 Search only within section 3 manual pages.
-4 Search only within section 4 manual pages.
-5 Search only within section 5 manual pages.
-6 Search only within section 6 manual pages.
-7 Search only within section 7 manual pages.
-8 Search only within section 8 manual pages.
-9 Search only within section 9 manual pages.
-C Do not show the context of the match.
-c Do show the context of the match (default).
-n Output up to the specified number of search results. The default limit is 10.
-p Display all matching results and pipe them through a pager (defaulting to more(1)).
-S machine
Limit the search to the pages for the specified machine architecture. By default pages for all architectures are shown in the search
results.
-s section
Restrict the search to the specified section of the manual. By default, pages from all section are shown. This option is for back-
wards compatibility with the classic version of apropos, using it is equivalent to using the [123456789] options directly.
FILES
/var/db/man.db The Sqlite FTS database which contains an index of the manual pages.
SEE ALSO man(1), whatis(1), makemandb(8)HISTORY
The apropos command appeared in 3.0BSD. It was rewritten in NetBSD 6.0 to support full text search using Sqlite.
AUTHORS
Abhinav Upadhyay
BSD April 21, 2012 BSD
Check Out this Related Man Page
MAN(1) General Commands Manual MAN(1)NAME
man - print out the manual
SYNOPSIS
man [ - ] [ -a ] [ -M path ] [ section ] title ...
DESCRIPTION
Man is the program which provides on-line access to the UNIX manual. If a section specifier is given, man looks in that section of the
manual for the given title(s). Section is either an Arabic section number (``3'' for example), or one of the words ``local'', ``new,'' or
``old''. (The abbreviations ``l'', ``n'', and ``o'' are also allowed.) If section is omitted, man searches all sections of the manual,
giving preference to commands over library subroutines, and displays the first manual page it finds, if any. If the -a option is supplied,
man displays all applicable manual pages.
Normally man checks in standard locations (/usr/man and /usr/local/man) for manual information. This can be changed by supplying a search
path (a la the Bourne shell) with the -M flag. The search path is a colon (``:'') separated list of directories in which man expects to
find the standard manual subdirectories. This search path can also be set with the environmental variable MANPATH.
Since some manual pages are intended for use only on certain machines, man only searches those directories applicable to the current
machine. Man's determination of the current machine type can be overridden by setting the environmental variable MACHINE.
If the standard output is a teletype, and the - flag is not provided, man uses more(1), or the pager provided by the environmental variable
PAGER, to display the manual page.
The FORTRAN version of section 3 of the manual may be specified by supplying man with the section ``3f''. Also, a specific section of the
local manual may be specified by appending a number to the section, i.e. ``l5'' would indicate section 5 of the local manual.
FILES
/usr/man standard manual area
/usr/man/cat?/* directories containing standard manual pages
/usr/local/man/cat?/* directories containing local manual pages
/usr/src/man directories containing unformatted manual pages
SEE ALSO apropos(1), more(1), whatis(1), whereis(1)BUGS
The manual is supposed to be reproducible either on the phototypesetter or on a typewriter, however, on a typewriter, some information is
necessarily lost.
4th Berkeley Distribution April 19, 1988 MAN(1)