APROPOS(1)

📦
version 2.13.1 · 3 versions
, in fedora 43, fedora 44

💖 APROPOS(1) 💖

Manual pager utils 🎀

📜 NAME

okay so apropos is the search bar for manual page names and descriptions 🔍✨ literally type a keyword and it digs through the short blurbs for you 💅

🎯 SYNOPSIS

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

🌸 DESCRIPTION

every manual page has a short description tucked inside it 🥹 apropos goes through those descriptions looking for instances of keyword 🔎

keyword is usually a regular expression, same as if you pass -r 🤓 or you can make it a wildcard with -w, or demand an exact match with -e 🦋 with these options you might need to quote the keyword or escape (\) the special characters so your shell doesn't get in the way 🙄

the standard matching rules let matches happen against the page name and against word boundaries in the description 💜

heads up bestie: the database apropos searches gets updated by the mandb program ⚠️ depending on your setup, a periodic cron job might handle that for you, or you might have to run it yourself after installing new manual pages 🫶

✨ OPTIONS ✨

  • -d, --debug — prints debugging info 🐛
  • -v, --verbose — prints verbose warning messages 📢
  • -r, --regex — treats each keyword as a regular expression, and this is the default vibe 👑 each keyword gets matched against page names and descriptions separately 🌈 it can match any part of either one, and it doesn't have to stick to word boundaries 💅
  • -w, --wildcard — treats each keyword as a pattern with shell style wildcards 🃏 each keyword gets matched against page names and descriptions separately 🫧 if --exact is also in the mix, only an expanded keyword that matches a whole description or whole page name counts ✅ otherwise the keyword is also allowed to match on word boundaries in the description 🍓
  • -e, --exact — each keyword has to be an exact match against page names and descriptions 🎯
  • -a, --and — only shows items that match all the keywords you gave it 🧚 the default is to show items that match any keyword 🌸
  • -l, --long — doesn't trim the output to your terminal width 📏 normally the output gets cut down to fit so poorly written NAME sections don't look ugly 🙈
  • -s list, --sections=list, --section=list — only searches the sections you name 📚 list is a colon- or comma-separated list of sections 🧁 a plain section like 3 will show pages in sections 3, 3perl, 3x, and so on 🌷 but if you add an extension like 3perl, the list only includes pages from that exact part of the section 💜
  • -m system[,...], --systems=system[,...] — if your system can peek at other operating systems' manual page descriptions, you can search them with this one 🛸 for example, to search NewOS's descriptions use -m NewOS 🚀 system can be a combo of comma-delimited OS names 🫶 to include a search of the native OS's whatis descriptions, put the system name man in the argument string 🌈 this option overrides the $SYSTEM environment variable 👑
  • -M path, --manpath=path — swaps in your own set of colon-delimited manual page hierarchies to search 🗺️ by default apropos uses the $MANPATH environment variable, unless it's empty or unset, and then it works out a manpath from your $PATH 🧭 this option overrides the contents of $MANPATH 💅
  • -L locale, --locale=locale — apropos normally figures out your locale by calling the C function setlocale(3), which checks various environment variables like $LC_MESSAGES and $LANG 🌍 to temporarily override that, pass a locale string straight to apropos with this option ✨ it doesn't kick in until the actual search starts 🙃 output like the help message always shows up in the locale that was figured out at the start 💖
  • -C file, --config-file=file — uses this user config file instead of the default ~/.manpath 📁
  • -?, --help — prints a help message and exits 🆘
  • --usage — prints a short usage message and exits 📝
  • -V, --version — displays version info 🏷️

🚦 EXIT STATUS

  • 0 — the program ran successfully 🥳
  • 1 — there was a usage, syntax or config file error 🙅‍♀️
  • 2 — there was an operational error 😵
  • 16 — nothing matched your criteria 🫠

🌈 ENVIRONMENT

  • SYSTEM — if $SYSTEM is set, it does the same thing as passing it to the -m option 🛸
  • MANPATH — if $MANPATH is set, its value gets read as the colon-delimited manual page hierarchy search path 🗺️ check the SEARCH PATH section of manpath(5) for the default behaviour and the nitty gritty on how this variable gets handled 📖
  • MANWIDTH — if $MANWIDTH is set, its value is used as the terminal width (see the --long option) 📏 if it's not set, the width gets calculated from $COLUMNS, plus ioctl(2) if it's available, and if all else fails it falls back to 80 characters 🙃
  • POSIXLY_CORRECT — if $POSIXLY_CORRECT is set, even to a null value, the default search is treated as an extended regex (-r) 🤓 honestly, that's the default anyway these days 💀

🗂️ 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) 🌟

🐛 BUGS

if something's broken, report it here 🙈 https://gitlab.com/man-db/man-db/-/issues https://savannah.nongnu.org/bugs/?group=man-db

bestie, you're all caught up 🌈 this was APROPOS(1) from the 2.13.1 release, dated 2025-05-02 🎀 now go find your manual pages and slay the terminal 💅✨

📦 where this page comes from