Commands you might have missed: apropos
Posted by djzort on Wed 3 Sep 2008 at 09:52
apropos is a standard unix command which is very frequently forgotten. That is a shame as this tool it is to man pages, what google is to the world wide web!
Basically apropos searches your MAN path for man pages relating to the search string. It searches both the page name and the description!
dean@optimus:~$ apropos ethernet brctl (8) - ethernet bridge administration ethers (5) - Ethernet address to IP number database ethtool (8) - Display or change ethernet card settings sk98lin (4) - Marvell/SysKonnect Gigabit Ethernet driver v6.21 dean@optimus:~$
apropos can also search using wild cards (-w) or regexes (-r) and a variety of other options as listed in the apropos man page.
dean@optimus:~$ apropos -w ap*s appres (1) - list X application resource database apropos (1) - search the manual page names and descriptions apt-extracttemplates (1) - Utility to extract DebConf config and templates from Debian packages apt-sortpkgs (1) - Utility to sort package index files apt_preferences (5) - Preference control file for APT AptPkg::PkgRecords (3pm) - APT package description class desktop-file-install (8) - install a desktop file to the applications directory DPMSSetTimeouts (3) - permits applications to set the timeout values used by the X server for DPMS timings gnome-session-remove (1) - Remove or list applications in the current GNOME session kdeinit_wrapper (1) - start applications via kdeinit kshell (1) - start applications via kdeinit kwrapper (1) - start applications via kdeinit make_driver_db_lpr (1) - create a printer database from aps filter database and ifhp filter database. perl-tk (3pm) - Writing Tk applications in Perl 5 Tk::UserGuide (3pm) - Writing Tk applications in Perl 5 xlsclients (1) - list client applications running on a display
You will find apropos on just about every unix & linux system you will come across.
I don't know what it stands for or if its even an english word, a history of this command would be interesting!
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is quicker to type :)
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'A propos' is indeed french however the word apropos is, like so many others, one we (speakers of English) have appropriated and is, consequently, an English word. It means; regarding, about, in relation to, fitting, to the purpose.
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$ apropos -w 'ap*s'Without the quotes, it only works if no filenames in the current directory happen to match ap*s; if they do, you end up searching on them instead. Even when there are no matching filenames, if you're in bash, you're relying on nullglob being unset.
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Good point, thats always a gotcha though - regardless of the command being used.
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http://www.dictometer.com/apropos
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