APROPOS(1)		      Manual pager utils		    APROPOS(1)



NAME
       apropos - search the manual page names and descriptions

SYNOPSIS
       apropos	[-dalv?V] [-e|-w|-r] [-s list] [-m system[,...]] [-M path] [-L
       locale] [-C file] keyword ...

DESCRIPTION
       Each manual page has a short description available within it.   apropos
       searches the descriptions for instances of keyword.

       keyword	is  usually  a regular expression, as if (-r) was used, or may
       contain wildcards (-w), or match the exact keyword (-e).	  Using	 these
       options,	 it  may  be  necessary to quote the keyword or escape (\) the
       special characters to stop the shell from interpreting them.

       The standard matching rules allow matches to be made against  the  page
       name and word boundaries in the description.

       The  database  searched	by  apropos  is	 updated by the mandb program.
       Depending on your installation, this may be run by a periodic cron job,
       or  may	need  to  be  run  manually  after  new manual pages have been
       installed.

OPTIONS
       -d, --debug
	      Print debugging information.

       -v, --verbose
	      Print verbose warning messages.

       -r, --regex
	      Interpret each keyword as a regular  expression.	 This  is  the
	      default  behaviour.   Each  keyword  will be matched against the
	      page names and the descriptions independently.  It can match any
	      part of either.  The match is not limited to word boundaries.

       -w, --wildcard
	      Interpret each keyword as a pattern containing shell style wild-
	      cards.  Each keyword will be matched against the page names  and
	      the  descriptions	 independently.	  If  --exact  is also used, a
	      match will only be found	if  an	expanded  keyword  matches  an
	      entire  description or page name.	 Otherwise the keyword is also
	      allowed to match on word boundaries in the description.

       -e, --exact
	      Each keyword will be exactly matched against the page names  and
	      the descriptions.

       -a, --and
	      Only  display  items  that match all the supplied keywords.  The
	      default is to display items that match any keyword.

       -l, --long
	      Do not trim output to the terminal width.	 Normally, output will
	      be  truncated  to	 the terminal width to avoid ugly results from
	      poorly-written NAME sections.

       -s list, --sections list, --section list
	      Search only the given manual sections.   list  is	 a  colon-  or
	      comma-separated list of sections.	 If an entry in list is a sim-
	      ple section,  for	 example  "3",	then  the  displayed  list  of
	      descriptions  will include pages in sections "3", "3perl", "3x",
	      and so on; while if an entry in list has an extension, for exam-
	      ple "3perl", then the list will only include pages in that exact
	      part of the manual section.

       -m system[,...], --systems=system[,...]
	      If this system has access to  other  operating  system's	manual
	      page  descriptions,  they can be searched using this option.  To
	      search NewOS's manual  page  descriptions,  use  the  option  -m
	      NewOS.

	      The  system  specified  can  be a combination of comma-delimited
	      operating system names.  To include a search of the native oper-
	      ating  system's whatis descriptions, include the system name man
	      in the argument string.  This option will override  the  $SYSTEM
	      environment variable.

       -M path, --manpath=path
	      Specify  an alternate set of colon-delimited manual page hierar-
	      chies to search.	By default, apropos uses the $MANPATH environ-
	      ment  variable,  unless  it  is empty or unset, in which case it
	      will determine an appropriate manpath based on your $PATH	 envi-
	      ronment  variable.   This option overrides the contents of $MAN-
	      PATH.

       -L locale, --locale=locale
	      apropos will normally determine your current locale by a call to
	      the  C function setlocale(3) which interrogates various environ-
	      ment variables, possibly including $LC_MESSAGES and  $LANG.   To
	      temporarily  override  the  determined value, use this option to
	      supply a locale string directly to apropos.  Note that  it  will
	      not  take	 effect	 until	the  search for pages actually begins.
	      Output such as the help message will always be displayed in  the
	      initially determined locale.

       -C file, --config-file=file
	      Use  this	 user  configuration  file  rather than the default of
	      ~/.manpath.

       -?, --help
	      Print a help message and exit.

       --usage
	      Print a short usage message and exit.

       -V, --version
	      Display version information.

EXIT STATUS
       0      Successful program execution.

       1      Usage, syntax or configuration file error.

       2      Operational error.

       16     Nothing was found that matched the criteria specified.

ENVIRONMENT
       SYSTEM If $SYSTEM is set, it will have the same effect  as  if  it  had
	      been specified as the argument to the -m option.

       MANPATH
	      If $MANPATH is set, its value is interpreted as the colon-delim-
	      ited manual page hierarchy search path to use.

       MANWIDTH
	      If $MANWIDTH is set, its value is used  as  the  terminal	 width
	      (see  the	 --long option).  If it is not set, the terminal width
	      will be calculated using an ioctl(2) if available, the value  of
	      $COLUMNS, or falling back to 80 characters if all else fails.

       POSIXLY_CORRECT
	      If  $POSIXLY_CORRECT  is	set, even to a null value, the default
	      apropos search will be as an  extended  regex  (-r).   Nowadays,
	      this is the default behaviour anyway.

FILES
       /usr/share/man/index.(bt|db|dir|pag)
	      A traditional global index database cache.

       /var/cache/man/index.(bt|db|dir|pag)
	      An FHS compliant global index database cache.

       /usr/share/man/.../whatis
	      A traditional whatis text database.

SEE ALSO
       man(1), whatis(1), mandb(8)

AUTHOR
       Wilf. (G.Wilford@ee.surrey.ac.uk).
       Fabrizio Polacco (fpolacco@debian.org).
       Colin Watson (cjwatson@debian.org).



2.6.3				  2012-09-17			    APROPOS(1)