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 [-123456789Ccp] [-n Number of 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 makemandb(8) utility.

     This implementation of the apropos utility is more sophisticated than the
     classical version of apropos.  Like modern search applications, it uses
     advanced techniques like stemming and term weighting to rank the matching
     results in decreasing order of relevance.  By default apropos will only
     display the top 10 matches in the output.

     Quotes are optional for specifying multiword queries.

     It supports the following options:

     -1      Search only within section 1 manual pages.

     -2      Search only within section 2 manual pages.

     -3      Search only within section 3 manual pages.

     -4      Search only within section 4 manual pages.

     -5      Search only within section 5 manual pages.

     -6      Search only within section 6 manual pages.

     -7      Search only within section 7 manual pages.

     -8      Search only within section 8 manual pages.

     -9      Search only within section 9 manual pages.

     -C      Do not show the context of the match.

     -c      Do show the context of the match (default).

     -n      Output up to the specified number of search results.  The default
             limit is 10.

     -p      Display all matching results and pipe them through a pager
             (defaulting to more(1)).

     -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 section 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

     /var/db/man.db The Sqlite FTS database which contains an index of the
               manual pages.


SEE ALSO

     man(1), whatis(1), 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 6.1.3                    April 21, 2012                    NetBSD 6.1.3