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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)
© 2004 The SCO Group, Inc. All rights reserved.
UnixWare 7 Release 7.1.4 - 25 April 2004