1APROPOS(1) Manual pager utils APROPOS(1)
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6 apropos - search the manual page names and descriptions
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9 apropos [-dalhvV] [-e|-w|-r] [-s section] [-m system[,...]] [-M path]
10 [-L locale] [-C file] keyword ...
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13 Each manual page has a short description available within it. apropos
14 searches the descriptions for instances of keyword.
15 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.
20 The standard matching rules allow matches to be made against the page
22 name and word boundaries in the description.
23 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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30 -d, --debug
31 Print debugging information.
32 -v, --verbose
34 Print verbose warning messages.
35 -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.
41 -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.
49 -e, --exact
51 Each keyword will be exactly matched against the page names and
52 the descriptions.
53 -a, --and
55 Only display items that match all the supplied keywords. The
56 default is to display items that match any keyword.
57 -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.
62 -s section, --section section
64 Search only the given manual section. If section is a simple
65 section, for example "3", then the displayed list of descrip‐
66 tions will include pages in sections "3", "3perl", "3x", and so
67 on; while if section has an extension, for example "3perl", then
68 the list will only include pages in that exact part of the man‐
69 ual section.
70 -m system[,...], --systems=system[,...]
72 If this system has access to other operating system's manual
73 page descriptions, they can be searched using this option. To
74 search NewOS's manual page descriptions, use the option -m
75 NewOS.
76 The system specified can be a combination of comma-delimited
78 operating system names. To include a search of the native oper‐
79 ating system's whatis descriptions, include the system name man
80 in the argument string. This option will override the $SYSTEM
81 environment variable.
82 -M path, --manpath=path
84 Specify an alternate set of colon-delimited manual page hierar‐
85 chies to search. By default, apropos uses the $MANPATH environ‐
86 ment variable, unless it is empty or unset, in which case it
87 will determine an appropriate manpath based on your $PATH envi‐
88 ronment variable. This option overrides the contents of $MAN‐
89 PATH.
90 -L locale, --locale=locale
92 apropos will normally determine your current locale by a call to
93 the C function setlocale(3) which interrogates various environ‐
94 ment variables, possibly including $LC_MESSAGES and $LANG. To
95 temporarily override the determined value, use this option to
96 supply a locale string directly to apropos. Note that it will
97 not take effect until the search for pages actually begins.
98 Output such as the help message will always be displayed in the
99 initially determined locale.
100 -C file, --config-file=file
102 Use this user configuration file rather than the default of
103 ~/.manpath.
104 -h, --help
106 Print a help message and exit.
107 -V, --version
109 Display version information.
110
112 0 Successful program execution.
113 1 Usage, syntax or configuration file error.
115 2 Operational error.
117 16 Nothing was found that matched the criteria specified.
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121 SYSTEM If $SYSTEM is set, it will have the same effect as if it had
122 been specified as the argument to the -m option.
123 MANPATH
125 If $MANPATH is set, its value is interpreted as the colon-delim‐
126 ited manual page hierarchy search path to use.
127 MANWIDTH
129 If $MANWIDTH is set, its value is used as the terminal width
130 (see the --long option). If it is not set, the terminal width
131 will be calculated using an ioctl(2) if available, the value of
132 $COLUMNS, or falling back to 80 characters if all else fails.
133 POSIXLY_CORRECT
135 If $POSIXLY_CORRECT is set, even to a null value, the default
136 apropos search will be as an extended regex (-r). Nowadays,
137 this is the default behaviour anyway.
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140 /usr/share/man/index.(bt|db|dir|pag)
141 A traditional global index database cache.
142 /var/cache/man/index.(bt|db|dir|pag)
144 An FHS compliant global index database cache.
145 /usr/share/man/.../whatis
147 A traditional whatis text database.
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150 whatis(1), man(1), mandb(8).
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153 Wilf. (G.Wilford@ee.surrey.ac.uk).
154 Fabrizio Polacco (fpolacco@debian.org).
155 Colin Watson (cjwatson@debian.org).
1562.5.7 2010-02-16 APROPOS(1)