June 29, 1993 APROPOS 1

### NAME

apropos - locate commands by keyword lookup

### SYNOPSIS

apropos [-C path] [-M path] [-m path] keyword ...

### DESCRIPTION

apropos shows which manual pages contain instances of any of the given keyword(s) in their title line. Each word is considered separately and case of letters is ignored. Words which are part of other words are considered; when looking for ``compile'', apropos will also list all instances of ``compiler''.

If the line output by apropos starts `````name(section)``...`'' you can enter `````man` `section` `name`'' to get its documentation.

The options are as follows:

-C
  Use different man(1) configuration file than the default, ```/etc/man.conf`.

-M
  Override the list of standard directories apropos searches for a database named ```whatis.db`. The supplied path must be a colon ``:'' separated list of directories. This search path may also be set using the environment variable ```MANPATH`.

-m
  Augment the list of standard directories apropos searches for its database. The supplied path must be a colon ``:'' separated list of directories. These directories will be searched before the standard directories, or the directories supplied with the -M option or the ```MANPATH` environment variable.

### ENVIRONMENT

```MANPATH`
  The standard search path used by man(1) may be overridden by specifying a path in the ```MANPATH` environment variable. The format of the path is a colon ``:'' separated list of directories.

### FILES

```whatis.db`
  name of the apropos database
```/etc/man.conf`
  man(1) configuration file, used to get location of whatis database if ```MANPATH` is not set.

### SEE ALSO

man(1), whatis(1), whereis(1), man.conf(5), makewhatis(8)

### HISTORY

The apropos command appeared in 3.0BSD.