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 the case of letters is ignored. Words that are part of other words are listed.  Thus, looking for the word compile hits all instances of ‘compiler’ also.

If the line starts ‘name(section) ...’ you can do ‘man section name’ to get the documentation for it.  The following command line lists all commands that have to do with formatting:

apropos format

To then access the reference page for the printf subroutine that you see listed, type:

man 3s printf

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

Files

/usr/lib/whatisdata base

See Also

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