1APROPOS(1)                    Manual pager utils                    APROPOS(1)
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NAME

6       apropos - search the manual page names and descriptions
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SYNOPSIS

9       apropos  [-dalv?V] [-e|-w|-r] [-s list] [-m system[,...]] [-M path] [-L
10       locale] [-C file] keyword ...
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DESCRIPTION

13       Each manual page has a short description available within it.   apropos
14       searches the descriptions for instances of keyword.
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16       keyword  is  usually  a regular expression, as if (-r) was used, or may
17       contain wildcards (-w), or match the exact keyword (-e).   Using  these
18       options,  it  may  be  necessary to quote the keyword or escape (\) the
19       special characters to stop the shell from interpreting them.
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21       The standard matching rules allow matches to be made against  the  page
22       name and word boundaries in the description.
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24       The  database  searched  by  apropos  is  updated by the mandb program.
25       Depending on your installation, this may be run by a periodic cron job,
26       or  may  need  to  be  run  manually  after  new manual pages have been
27       installed.
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OPTIONS

30       -d, --debug
31              Print debugging information.
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33       -v, --verbose
34              Print verbose warning messages.
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36       -r, --regex
37              Interpret each keyword as a regular  expression.   This  is  the
38              default  behaviour.   Each  keyword  will be matched against the
39              page names and the descriptions independently.  It can match any
40              part of either.  The match is not limited to word boundaries.
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42       -w, --wildcard
43              Interpret each keyword as a pattern containing shell style wild‐
44              cards.  Each keyword will be matched against the page names  and
45              the  descriptions  independently.   If  --exact  is also used, a
46              match will only be found  if  an  expanded  keyword  matches  an
47              entire  description or page name.  Otherwise the keyword is also
48              allowed to match on word boundaries in the description.
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50       -e, --exact
51              Each keyword will be exactly matched against the page names  and
52              the descriptions.
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54       -a, --and
55              Only  display  items  that match all the supplied keywords.  The
56              default is to display items that match any keyword.
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58       -l, --long
59              Do not trim output to the terminal width.  Normally, output will
60              be  truncated  to  the terminal width to avoid ugly results from
61              poorly-written NAME sections.
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63       -s list, --sections list, --section list
64              Search only the given manual sections.   list  is  a  colon-  or
65              comma-separated list of sections.  If an entry in list is a sim‐
66              ple section,  for  example  "3",  then  the  displayed  list  of
67              descriptions  will include pages in sections "3", "3perl", "3x",
68              and so on; while if an entry in list has an extension, for exam‐
69              ple "3perl", then the list will only include pages in that exact
70              part of the manual section.
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72       -m system[,...], --systems=system[,...]
73              If this system has access to  other  operating  system's  manual
74              page  descriptions,  they can be searched using this option.  To
75              search NewOS's manual  page  descriptions,  use  the  option  -m
76              NewOS.
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78              The  system  specified  can  be a combination of comma-delimited
79              operating system names.  To include a search of the native oper‐
80              ating  system's whatis descriptions, include the system name man
81              in the argument string.  This option will override  the  $SYSTEM
82              environment variable.
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84       -M path, --manpath=path
85              Specify  an alternate set of colon-delimited manual page hierar‐
86              chies to search.  By default, apropos uses the $MANPATH environ‐
87              ment  variable,  unless  it  is empty or unset, in which case it
88              will determine an appropriate manpath based on your $PATH  envi‐
89              ronment  variable.   This option overrides the contents of $MAN‐
90              PATH.
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92       -L locale, --locale=locale
93              apropos will normally determine your current locale by a call to
94              the  C function setlocale(3) which interrogates various environ‐
95              ment variables, possibly including $LC_MESSAGES and  $LANG.   To
96              temporarily  override  the  determined value, use this option to
97              supply a locale string directly to apropos.  Note that  it  will
98              not  take  effect  until  the  search for pages actually begins.
99              Output such as the help message will always be displayed in  the
100              initially determined locale.
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102       -C file, --config-file=file
103              Use  this  user  configuration  file  rather than the default of
104              ~/.manpath.
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106       -?, --help
107              Print a help message and exit.
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109       --usage
110              Print a short usage message and exit.
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112       -V, --version
113              Display version information.
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EXIT STATUS

116       0      Successful program execution.
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118       1      Usage, syntax or configuration file error.
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120       2      Operational error.
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122       16     Nothing was found that matched the criteria specified.
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ENVIRONMENT

125       SYSTEM If $SYSTEM is set, it will have the same effect  as  if  it  had
126              been specified as the argument to the -m option.
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128       MANPATH
129              If $MANPATH is set, its value is interpreted as the colon-delim‐
130              ited manual page hierarchy search path to use.
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132       MANWIDTH
133              If $MANWIDTH is set, its value is used  as  the  terminal  width
134              (see  the  --long option).  If it is not set, the terminal width
135              will be calculated using the value of $COLUMNS, an  ioctl(2)  if
136              available, or falling back to 80 characters if all else fails.
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138       POSIXLY_CORRECT
139              If  $POSIXLY_CORRECT  is  set, even to a null value, the default
140              apropos search will be as an  extended  regex  (-r).   Nowadays,
141              this is the default behaviour anyway.
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FILES

144       /usr/share/man/index.(bt|db|dir|pag)
145              A traditional global index database cache.
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147       /var/cache/man/index.(bt|db|dir|pag)
148              An FHS compliant global index database cache.
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150       /usr/share/man/.../whatis
151              A traditional whatis text database.
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SEE ALSO

154       man(1), whatis(1), mandb(8)
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AUTHOR

157       Wilf. (G.Wilford@ee.surrey.ac.uk).
158       Fabrizio Polacco (fpolacco@debian.org).
159       Colin Watson (cjwatson@debian.org).
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1632.7.6.1                           2016-12-12                        APROPOS(1)
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