APROPOS(1) Manual pager utils APROPOS(1)
NAME
apropos - search the manual page names and descriptions
SYNOPSIS
apropos [-dalv?V] [-e|-w|-r] [-s list] [-m system[,...]] [-M path] [-L locale] [-C file] keyword ...
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 description.
The database searched by apropos is updated by the mandb program. Depending on your installation, this may be run by a periodic cron job,
or may need to be run manually after new manual pages have been installed.
OPTIONS
-d, --debug
Print debugging information.
-v, --verbose
Print verbose warning messages.
-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 descriptions independently. It can match any part of either. The match is not limited to word boundaries.
-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. If --exact is also used, a match will only be found if an expanded keyword matches an entire descrip-
tion or page name. Otherwise the keyword is also allowed to match on word boundaries in the description.
-e, --exact
Each keyword will be exactly matched against the page names and the descriptions.
-a, --and
Only display items that match all the supplied keywords. The default is to display items that match any keyword.
-l, --long
Do not trim output to the terminal width. Normally, output will be truncated to the terminal width to avoid ugly results from
poorly-written NAME sections.
-s list, --sections list, --section list
Search only the given manual sections. list is a colon- or comma-separated list of sections. If an entry in list is a simple sec-
tion, for example "3", then the displayed list of descriptions will include pages in sections "3", "3perl", "3x", and so on; while
if an entry in list has an extension, for example "3perl", then the list will only include pages in that exact part of the manual
section.
-m system[,...], --systems=system[,...]
If this system has access to other operating system's manual page descriptions, they can be searched using this option. To search
NewOS's manual 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 descriptions, include the system name man in the argument string. This option will override the $SYSTEM environment
variable.
-M path, --manpath=path
Specify an alternate set of colon-delimited manual page hierarchies to search. By default, apropos uses the $MANPATH environment
variable, unless it is empty or unset, in which case it will determine an appropriate manpath based on your $PATH environment vari-
able. This option overrides the contents of $MANPATH.
-L locale, --locale=locale
apropos will normally determine your current locale by a call to the C function setlocale(3) which interrogates various environment
variables, possibly including $LC_MESSAGES and $LANG. To temporarily override the determined value, use this option to supply a
locale string directly to apropos. Note that it will not take effect until the search for pages actually begins. Output such as
the help message will always be displayed in the initially determined locale.
-C file, --config-file=file
Use this user configuration file rather than the default of ~/.manpath.
-?, --help
Print a help message and exit.
--usage
Print a short usage message and exit.
-V, --version
Display version 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 specified.
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.
MANWIDTH
If $MANWIDTH is set, its value is used as the terminal width (see the --long option). If it is not set, the terminal width will be
calculated using the value of $COLUMNS, an ioctl(2) if available, or falling back to 80 characters if all else fails.
POSIXLY_CORRECT
If $POSIXLY_CORRECT is set, even to a null value, the default apropos search will be as an extended regex (-r). Nowadays, this is
the default behaviour anyway.
FILES
/usr/share/man/index.(bt|db|dir|pag)
A traditional global index database cache.
/var/cache/man/index.(bt|db|dir|pag)
An FHS compliant global index database cache.
/usr/share/man/.../whatis
A traditional whatis text database.
SEE ALSO
man(1), whatis(1), mandb(8)
AUTHOR
Wilf. (G.Wilford@ee.surrey.ac.uk).
Fabrizio Polacco (fpolacco@debian.org).
Colin Watson (cjwatson@debian.org).
2.8.3 2018-04-05 APROPOS(1)