NAME

apropos − locate commands by keyword lookup

SYNTAX

apropos keyword ... 

DESCRIPTION

The apropos command shows which manual sections contain instances of any of the given keywords in their title.  Each word is considered separately and case of letters is ignored.  Words which are part of other words are considered thus looking for compile will hit all instances of ‘compiler’ also.  Try

apropos password

and

apropos editor

If the line starts ‘name(section) ...’ you can do ‘man section name’ to get the documentation for it.  Try ‘apropos format’ and then ‘man 3s printf’ to get the manual on the subroutine printf. 

The apropos command is actually just the −k option to the man(1) command. 

FILES

/usr/lib/whatisdata base

SEE ALSO

man(1), whatis(1), catman(8)