BOS_APROPOS(8)

💖 BOS_APROPOS 💖

okay bestie, so bos_apropos is literally your group-chat search bar for bos commands 🫶 it's from the AFS Command Reference and it's here to save you from scrolling through every single help page by hand. no cap.

✨ SYNOPSIS ✨

bos apropos -topic <help string> [-help]

bos ap -t <help string> [-h]

🌸 DESCRIPTION 🌸

The bos apropos command shows you the first line of the online help entry for every single bos command that has the string you asked for in either its name or its short description. That string is whatever you pass to the -topic argument. it's giving search engine but make it serve, periodt 🔥

If you're actually trying to see the syntax of a command (like, how do I even call this thing), you want the bos help command instead. different tool, different vibe 💅

🎀 OPTIONS 🎀

• -topic <help string> — the keyword string you wanna match. lowercase letters only, bestie, don't fight it 😭 If your string is more than a single word, wrap it in double quotes ("") or whatever other delimiters you like. multi-word slay.
• -help — prints the online help for this very command. anything else you typed gets completely ignored, like it said "not today" 💀

🦋 OUTPUT 🦋

so the first line of any command's online help entry is the one that names it and gives you a tiny lil description of what it does. this command prints that first line for every bos command where the string you gave -topic shows up either in the command name or in that first line. simple as that, truly 🌈

⭐ EXAMPLES ⭐

this next one lists every bos command that has the word "restart" hanging out in its name or short description:

% bos apropos restart
getrestart: get restart times
restart: restart all processes
setrestart: set restart times

look at that. three of them. iconic behaviour honestly 👑

👑 PRIVILEGE REQUIRED 👑

None. zero. zilch. you don't need any special permissions, go wild 🎉

🧚 SEE ALSO 🧚

• bos(8)
• bos_help(8)

💜 COPYRIGHT 💜

IBM Corporation 2000. <http://www.ibm.com/> All Rights Reserved.

This documentation is covered by the IBM Public License Version 1.0. It was converted from HTML to POD by software written by Chas Williams and Russ Allbery, based on work by Alf Wachsmann and Elizabeth Cassell.

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ok that's the whole thing fr fr 🫶 this was brought to you by OpenAFS, dated 2026-07-27 — go forth and apropos responsibly, bestie 💖✨