%thapropos%(1)                                         Manual pager utils                                         %thapropos%(1)



NAME
       %apropos% - search the manual page names and descriptions

SYNOPSIS
       %apropos% [-dalhvV] [-e|-w|-r] [-s section] [-m system[,...]] [-M path] [-L locale] [-C file] keyword ...

DESCRIPTION
       Each  manual page has a short description available within it.  %apropos% searches the descriptions for instances of key-
       word.

       keyword is usually a regular expression, as if (-r) was used, or may contain wildcards (-w), or match the  exact  keyword
       (-e).   Using  these  options,  it may be necessary to quote the keyword or escape (\) the special characters to stop the
       shell from interpreting them.

       The standard matching rules allow matches to be made against the page name and word boundaries in the description.

       The database searched by %apropos% is updated by the %mandb% program.  Depending on your installation, this may be run by
       a periodic cron job, or may need to be run manually after new manual pages have been installed.

OPTIONS
       -d, --debug
              Print debugging information.

       -v, --verbose
              Print verbose warning messages.

       -r, --regex
              Interpret  each  keyword  as  a  regular expression.  This is the default behaviour.  Each keyword will be matched
              against the page names and the descriptions independently.  It can match any part of either.   The  match  is  not
              limited to word boundaries.

       -w, --wildcard
              Interpret  each  keyword  as a pattern containing shell style wildcards.  Each keyword will be matched against the
              page names and the descriptions independently.  If --exact is also used, a match will only be found if an expanded
              keyword matches an entire description or page name.  Otherwise the keyword is also allowed to match on word bound-
              aries in the description.

       -e, --exact
              Each keyword will be exactly matched against the page names and the descriptions.

       -a, --and
              Only display items that match all the supplied keywords.  The default is to display items that match any keyword.

       -l, --long
              Do not trim output to the terminal width.  Normally, output will be truncated to the terminal width to avoid  ugly
              results from poorly-written NAME sections.

       -s section, --section section
              Search only the given manual section.  If section is a simple section, for example "3", then the displayed list of
              descriptions will include pages in sections "3", "3perl", "3x", and so on; while if section has an extension,  for
              example "3perl", then the list will only include pages in that exact part of the manual section.

       -m system[,...], --systems=system[,...]
              If  this  system  has access to other operating system's manual page descriptions, they can be searched using this
              option.  To search NewOS's manual page descriptions, use the option -m NewOS.

              The system specified can be a combination of comma-delimited operating system names.  To include a search  of  the
              native  operating  system's  whatis descriptions, include the system name man in the argument string.  This option
              will override the $SYSTEM environment variable.

       -M path, --manpath=path
              Specify an alternate set of colon-delimited manual page hierarchies to search.  By default, apropos uses the $MAN-
              PATH  environment  variable,  unless  it is empty or unset, in which case it will determine an appropriate manpath
              based on your $PATH environment variable.  This option overrides the contents of $MANPATH.

       -L locale, --locale=locale
              apropos will normally determine your current locale by a call to the C function  setlocale(3)  which  interrogates
              various  environment variables, possibly including $LC_MESSAGES and $LANG.  To temporarily override the determined
              value, use this option to supply a locale string directly to apropos.  Note that it will not take effect until the
              search  for  pages  actually  begins.   Output  such as the help message will always be displayed in the initially
              determined locale.

       -C file, --config-file=file
              Use this user configuration file rather than the default of ~/.manpath.

       -h, --help
              Print a help message and exit.

       -V, --version
              Display version information.

EXIT STATUS
       0      Successful program execution.

       1      Usage, syntax or configuration file error.

       2      Operational error.

       16     Nothing was found that matched the criteria specified.

ENVIRONMENT
       SYSTEM If $SYSTEM is set, it will have the same effect as if it had been specified as the argument to the -m option.

       MANPATH
              If $MANPATH is set, its value is interpreted as the colon-delimited manual page hierarchy search path to use.

       MANWIDTH
              If $MANWIDTH is set, its value is used as the terminal width (see the --long option).  If it is not set, the  ter-
              minal  width will be calculated using an ioctl(2) if available, the value of $COLUMNS, or falling back to 80 char-
              acters if all else fails.

       POSIXLY_CORRECT
              If $POSIXLY_CORRECT is set, even to a null value, the default %apropos% search will be as an extended regex  (-r).
              Nowadays, this is the default behaviour anyway.

FILES
       /usr/share/man/index.(bt|db|dir|pag)
              A traditional global index database cache.

       /var/cache/man/index.(bt|db|dir|pag)
              An FHS compliant global index database cache.

       /usr/share/man/.../whatis
              A traditional whatis text database.

SEE ALSO
       %whatis%(1), %man%(1), %mandb%(8).

AUTHOR
       Wilf. (G.WilfordATee.uk).
       Fabrizio Polacco (fpolaccoATdebian.org).
       Colin Watson (cjwatsonATdebian.org).



%version%                                                    %date%                                               %thapropos%(1)