apropos - phpMan

apropos(1) Manual pager utils apropos(1)

NAME
apropos - search the manual page names and descriptions

SYNOPSIS
apropos [-dhV] [-e|-w|-r] [-m system[,...]] [-M path] [-C file] keyword ...

DESCRIPTION
Each manual page has a short description available within it. apropos searches the
descriptions for instances of keyword.

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 bound-
aries in the description.

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 indepen-
dently. It can match any part of either. The match is not limited to word bound-
aries.

-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 boundaries in the description.

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

-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 descrip-
tions, 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 $MANPATH 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.

-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.

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 alternate or FHS compliant global index database cache.

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