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\" Copyright (c) 2011 Abhinav Upadhyay <[email protected]>
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Dd May 17, 2022
Dt APROPOS 1
Os
Sh NAME
Nm apropos
Nd search the complete content of all man pages
Sh SYNOPSIS
Nm
Op Fl 123456789hilMmPpr
Op Fl C Ar path
Op Fl n Ar results
Op Fl S Ar machine
Op Fl s Ar section
Ar query
Sh DESCRIPTION
The
Nm
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
Xr makemandb 8
utility.
Pp
This implementation of the
Nm
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.
Pp
Quotes are optional for specifying multiword queries.
Pp
It supports the following options:
Bl -tag -width Fl
It Fl 1 , No \&... , Fl 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
Fl s
option for single digit sections.
It Fl C Ar path
Use different
Xr man 1
configuration file than the default,
Pa /etc/man.conf .
It Fl h
Turn on html formatting.
It Fl i
Turn on terminal escape code formatting.
It Fl l
Legacy mode: Only searches name and name description.
Does not print context and turns off formatting.
It Fl M
Do not show the context of the match.
It Fl m
Show the context of the match (default).
It Fl n Ar results
Output up to the specified number of search results.
The default limit is infinity.
It Fl P
Turn on pager formatting.
It Fl p
Turn on pager formatting, and pipe the results through a pager (defaulting to
Xr more 1 ) .
It Fl r
Turn off formatting.
It Fl S Ar machine
Limit the search to the pages for the specified machine architecture.
By default pages for all architectures are shown in the search results.
It Fl s Ar 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:
Fl 1 , No \&... , Fl 9 .
El
Sh FILES
Bl -hang -width /etc/man.conf -compact
It Pa /etc/man.conf
The location of the SQLite FTS database can be configured using the
Cd _mandb
tag.
El
Sh ENVIRONMENT VARIABLES
Bl -tag -width Ev
It Ev 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.
It Ev PAGER
The pagination command used for writing the output, should this be requested.
If the
Ev PAGER
environment variable is null or not set, the standard pagination program
Xr more 1
will be used.
El
Sh SEE ALSO
Xr man 1 ,
Xr whatis 1 ,
Xr man.conf 5 ,
Xr makemandb 8
Sh HISTORY
The
Nm
command appeared in
Bx 3 .
It was rewritten in
Nx 6.0
to support full text search using SQLite.
Sh AUTHORS
An Abhinav Upadhyay