NAME

apropos − locate commands by keyword lookup

SYNOPSIS

apropos keyword...

DESCRIPTION

apropos displays the man page name, section number, and a short description for each man page whose NAME line contains keyword. This information is contained in the /usr/man/whatis database created by catman(8).  If catman(8) was not run, or was run with the −n option, apropos fails.  Each word is considered separately and the case of letters is ignored.  Words which are part of other words are considered; for example, when looking for ‘compile’, apropos finds all instances of ‘compiler’ also. 

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

Try

example% apropos password

and

example% apropos editor

If the line starts ‘filename(section) ...’ you can do ‘man section filename’ to display the man page for filename. Try

example% apropos format

and then

example% man 3s printf

to get the manual page on the subroutine printf(). 

FILES

/usr/man/whatis data base

SEE ALSO

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

DIAGNOSTICS

/usr/man/whatis: No such file or directory
This database does not exist. catman(8) must be run to create it. 

Solbourne Computer, Inc.  —  27 Dec 1990