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APROPOS(1)		      Manual pager utils		    APROPOS(1)

NAME
       apropos - search the manual page names and descriptions

SYNOPSIS
       apropos	[-dalhvV]  [-e|-w|-r] [-s section] [-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 section, --section section
	      Search only the given manual section.  If section	 is  a	simple
	      section,	for  example  "3", then the displayed list of descrip‐
	      tions will include pages in sections "3", "3perl", "3x", and  so
	      on; while if section has an extension, for example "3perl", then
	      the list will only include pages in that exact part of the  man‐
	      ual 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.

       -h, --help
	      Print a help 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
       whatis(1), man(1), mandb(8).

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

2.5.7				  2010-02-16			    APROPOS(1)
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