apropos

Last Updated on Monday, 24 May 2010 18:40

1. Name

apropos - search the manual page names and descriptions

2. Synopsis

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

3. Frequently used options

-s section, --section section   Search only 
the given manual section. 
-e, --exact  Each  keyword will be exactly matched
against the page names and the descriptions. 

4. Examples

This command searches a keyword in a command description text. Therefore it is easy to find out what commands are related to partitions when using partition as a keyword:

$ apropos partition 

It is not possible to remember all commands available on the Linux system however it is much easier to remember their functions therefore its hard to remember nmap and easy to remember scanner :

$ apropos scanner 

Searching using only a keyword may create a lot of output. With -s option you can limit the search for a particular manual section. Search for commands only related to a manual section 1 ( commands ):

$ apropos -s 1 partition 

to narrow down your output even more you can match exact words only with -e option:

$ apropos -e scan 

number of output lines with and without -e option:

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