apropos(1bsd)

apropos -- (BSD) locate commands by keyword lookup

Synopsis

/usr/ucb/apropos keyword . . .

Description

apropos finds manual pages that contain any of the given keywords in their short descriptions. apropos considers each word separately and is case-insensitive. Words which are part of other words are matched; thus, when looking for ``compile,'' apropos also finds all instances of ``compiler''.

apropos sorts its output alphabetically by command name.

apropos is equivalent to running man(1) with the -k option.

The system administrator can add local manual pages to the keyword database using makewhatis(1M).

Files

/usr/lib/scohelp/LANG/man/.SectionData/whatis/section: individual section keyword databases
/usr/lib/scohelp/LANG/man/whatis: master merged keyword database used by apropos

Examples

To list all the commands that have ``password'' in their description:

   apropos password

To list all the commands that have either ``password'' or ``editor'' in their description:

   apropos password editor

If the output of apropos begins with file(section), you can display the man page by entering:

   man section file

For example, the command apropos search might find the following entry:

   grep, egrep (1)         - search a file for a pattern

Enter man 1 grep to display the manual page for the grep(1) command.

References

catman(1Mbsd), man(1), whatis(1bsd), whatis(4)