apropos(C)

apropos -- locate commands by keyword lookup

Syntax

apropos keyword ...

Description

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

apropos sorts its output alphabetically by command name.

Local manual pages can be added to the keyword database by the system administrator. See makewhatis(ADM) for more details.

Examples

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

apropos password

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

apropos password editor

The command apropos search may find the following entry:

   grep (C)                - Search a file for a pattern

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

Files

/usr/man/whatis: keyword database

Standards conformance