apropos(1) - NetBSD Manual Pages

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APROPOS(1)              NetBSD General Commands Manual              APROPOS(1)


NAME

     apropos -- search the complete content of all man pages


SYNOPSIS

     apropos [-123456789hilMmPpr] [-C path] [-n results] [-S machine]
             [-s section] query


DESCRIPTION

     The apropos utility performs a full text search over the complete content
     of all man pages.  It uses the FTS engine of Sqlite to perform the
     search.  The database is created with the help of the makemandb(8) util-
     ity.

     This implementation of the apropos utility is more sophisticated than the
     classical version.  Like modern search applications, it uses advanced
     techniques like stemming and term weighting to rank the matching results
     in decreasing order of relevance.

     Quotes are optional for specifying multiword queries.

     It supports the following options:

     -[1-9]  Search only within the specified section of manual pages.

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

     -h      Turn on html formatting.

     -i      Turn on terminal escape code formatting.

     -l      Legacy mode: Only searches name and name description.  Does not
             print context and turns off formatting.

     -M      Do not show the context of the match.

     -m      Show the context of the match (default).

     -n results
             Output up to the specified number of search results.  The default
             limit is infinity.

     -P      Turn on pager formatting.

     -p      Turn on pager formatting, and pipe the results through a pager
             (defaulting to more(1)).

     -r      Turn off formatting.

     -S machine
             Limit the search to the pages for the specified machine architec-
             ture.  By default pages for all architectures are shown in the
             search results.

     -s section
             Restrict the search to the specified section of the manual.  By
             default, pages from all sections are shown.  This option is for
             backwards compatibility with the classic version of apropos,
             using it is equivalent to using the [123456789] options directly.


FILES

     /etc/man.conf  The location of the Sqlite FTS database can be configured
                    using the _mandb tag.


ENVIRONMENT VARIABLES

     The APROPOS environment variable is white-space tokenized as an argument
     vector and the options in it are parsed and set.  Command line options
     override the environment options.


SEE ALSO

     man(1), whatis(1), man.conf(5), makemandb(8)


HISTORY

     The apropos command appeared in 3.0BSD.  It was rewritten in NetBSD 6.0
     to support full text search using Sqlite.


AUTHORS

     Abhinav Upadhyay

NetBSD 9.2                       June 16, 2016                      NetBSD 9.2