APROPOS(1) | 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) utility.

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`
  Limit the search to the specified section of the manual. By default, pages from all sections are shown. These options are abbreviations for the `-s` option for single digit sections.
`-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 architecture. By default pages for all architectures are shown in the search results.
`-s` section
  Limit the search to the specified section of the manual. By default, pages from all sections are shown. For single digit sections you can use abbreviations: `-1`, ..., `-9`.

# FILES

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

# ENVIRONMENT VARIABLES

`APROPOS`
  This 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.
`PAGER`
  The pagination command used for writing the output, should this be requested. If the `PAGER` environment variable is null or not set, the standard pagination program more(1) will be used.

# SEE ALSO

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

# HISTORY

The `apropos` command appeared in 3BSD. It was rewritten in NetBSD 6.0 to support full text search using SQLite.

# AUTHORS

Abhinav Upadhyay

May 17, 2022 | NetBSD 10.1