APROPOS(1) BSD Reference Manual APROPOS(1)
apropos - locate commands by keyword lookup
apropos [-C file] [-M path] [-m path] keyword [...]
apropos shows which manual pages contain instances of any of the given
keyword(s) in their title line. Each word is considered separately and
case of letters is ignored. Words which are part of other words are con-
sidered; when looking for "compile", apropos will also list all instances
of "compiler".
If the line output by apropos starts "name (section) ...", you can enter
"man section name" to get its documentation.
The options are as follows:
-C file Specify an alternative configuration file in man.conf(5) format.
-M path Override the list of standard directories apropos searches for a
database named whatis.db. The supplied path must be a colon
(':') separated list of directories. This search path may also
be set using the environment variable MANPATH.
-m path Augment the list of standard directories apropos searches for
its database. The supplied path must be a colon (':') separated
list of directories. These directories will be searched before
the standard directories, or the directories supplied with the
-M option or the MANPATH environment variable.
MANPATH The standard search path used by man(1) may be overridden by
specifying a path in the MANPATH environment variable. The for-
mat of the path is a colon (':') separated list of directories.
whatis.db name of the apropos database
/etc/man.conf default man(1) configuration file
man(1), whatis(1), whereis(1), man.conf(5), makewhatis(8)
The apropos command appeared in 3.0BSD.
MirOS BSD #10-current June 29, 1993 1
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