.\" Man page for apropos
.\"
.\" Copyright (C), 1994, 1995, Graeme W. Wilford. (Wilf.)
.\"
.\" You may distribute under the terms of the GNU General Public
.\" License as specified in the file COPYING that comes with the 
.\" man_db distribution.
.\"
.\" Sat Oct 29 13:09:31 GMT 1994  Wilf. (G.Wilford@ee.surrey.ac.uk) 
.\" 
.TH apropos 1 "July 12th, 1995" "2.3.10" "Manual pager utils"
.SH NAME
apropos \- search the manual page names and descriptions
.SH SYNOPSIS
.B apropos 
.RB [\| \-dhV  \|] 
.RB [\| \-r \||\| \-w\c
\|]
.RB [\| \-m
.IR system \|[\|,.\|.\|.\|]\|]
.RB [ \-M
.IR path \|]
.I keyword
\&.\|.\|.
.SH DESCRIPTION
Each manual page has a short description available within
it. 
.B apropos
searches the descriptions for instances of
.IR keyword .

.I keyword
may contain wildcards
.RB ( \-w )
or be a regular expression
.RB ( \-r ).
Using these options, 
it may be
necessary to quote the
.I 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.
.SH OPTIONS
.TP
.B \-d, \-\-debug
Print debugging information.
.TP
.B \-r, \-\-regex
Interpret each keyword as a regular expression.
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.
.TP
.B \-w, \-\-wildcard
Interpret each keyword as a pattern containing shell style wildcards.
Each keyword will be matched against the page names and the descriptions
independently. Only if an expanded keyword matches an entire description or
page name, will a match be found.
.\"
.\" Due to the rather silly limit of 6 args per request in some `native'
.\" *roff compilers, we have do the following to get the two-line
.\" hanging tag on one line. .PP to begin a new paragraph, then the
.\" tag, then .RS (start relative indent), the text, finally .RE
.\" (end relative indent).
.\"
.PP
.B \-m 
.I system\c 
.RB \|[\|,.\|.\|.\|]\| ,
.BI \-\-systems= system\c 
\|[\|,.\|.\|.\|]
.RS
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
.B \-m
.BR NewOS .

The 
.I system
specified can be a combination of comma delimited operating 
system names.
To include a search of the native operating system's 
.B whatis
descriptions, include the system name
.B man 
in the argument string.
This option will override the
.RB $ SYSTEM
environment variable.
.RE
.TP
.BI \-M\  path ,\ \-\-manpath= path
Specify an alternate set of colon delimited, manual page hierarchies to search.
By default, 
.B apropos
uses the 
.RB $ MANPATH
environment variable unless it is empty or unset in which case it will 
determine an appropriate manpath based on your 
.RB $ PATH
environment variable.
This option overrides the contents of
.RB $ MANPATH .
.TP
.B \-h, \-\-help
Print a help message and exit.
.TP
.B \-V, \-\-version
Display version and author information.
.SH "EXIT STATUS"
.TP
.B 0
Successful program execution.
.TP
.B 1
Usage, syntax or configuration file error.
.TP
.B 2
Operational error.
.TP
.B 16
Nothing was found that matched the criteria specified.
.SH ENVIRONMENT
.TP
.B SYSTEM
If
.RB $ SYSTEM
is set, it will have the same effect as if it had been specified as the
argument to the 
.B \-m
option.
.TP
.B MANPATH
If
.RB $ MANPATH
is set, its value is interpreted as the colon delimited, manual page hierarchy
search path to use.
.TP
.B POSIXLY_CORRECT
If 
.RB $ POSIXLY_CORRECT
is set, even to a null value, the default 
.B apropos 
search will be as an extended regex 
.RB ( \-r ).
.SH FILES
.TP
.I /usr/man/index.(bt|db|dir|pag)
A traditional global
.I index
database cache.
.TP
.I /var/catman/index.(bt|db|dir|pag)
An alternate or FSSTND
compliant global
.I index
database cache.
.TP
.I /usr/man/\|.\|.\|.\|/whatis
A traditional 
.B whatis
text database.
.SH "SEE ALSO"
.BR whatis (1),
.BR man (1).
.SH AUTHOR
Wilf. (G.Wilford@ee.surrey.ac.uk)