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/share/man/windex database created by catman(1M).  If catman(1M) 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 −s section filename’ to display the man page for filename. Try

example% apropos format

and then

example% man −s 3s printf

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

FILES

/usr/share/man/windex table of contents and keyword database

ATTRIBUTES

See attributes(5) for descriptions of the following attributes:

SEE ALSO

man(1), whatis(1), catman(1M), attributes(5)

DIAGNOSTICS

/usr/share/man/windex: No such file or directory
This database does not exist. catman(1M) must be run to create it. 

SunOS 5.6  —  Last change: 20 Dec 1996